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THE WHITE HILLS; 

THEIR LEGENDS, LANDSCAPE, AND POETRY. 




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THE WHITE HILLS; 

:eie legends, landscape, and poetey. 



BY 

THOMAS STARR KING. 

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WITH SIXTY ILLUSTRATIONS, 
ENGRAVED BY ANDREW, FROM DRAWINGS BY WHEELOCK. 



BOSTON: 
CROSBY AND NICHOLS. 
117 Washington Street. 
1 862. 



.44- 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 
Crosby, Nichols, and Company, 
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts 



By Transfer 
D. C. Public Library' 
OCT 2 1937 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
STEPJEO TYPED AND PRINTED BY 
H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY 



To 

EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE 

THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED WITH ADMIRATION AND GRATITUDE. 



PREFACE. 

The object of this volume is to direct attention to the 
noble landscapes that lie along the routes by which the 
White Mountains are now approached by tourists, — many 
of which are still unknown to travellers ; to help per- 
sons appreciate landscape more adequately ; and to asso- 
ciate with the principal scenes poetic passages which illus- 
trate, either the permanent character of the views, or 
some peculiar aspects in which the author of the book 
has seen them. 

Where so many landscapes are described in detail, 
there cannot fail to be sameness and repetition. It would 
have been more to the author's mind to arrange the vol- 
ume by subjects instead of by districts, and to treat the 
scenery under the heads of rivers, passes, ridges, peaks, 
&c. But it was found that such a distribution and treat- 
ment, although it might have given the book more artis- 
tic unity, would have made it less valuable on the whole, 
than to construct it as a guide to particular landscapes, 

and a stimulant to the enjoyment of them. 

2 



viii 



PREFACE. 



If the volume shall be found to have any value apart 
from the illustrations, it will, no doubt, be chiefly due to 
the poetic quotations that are interwoven with the text. 
Great care has been used to make them pertinent to the 
particular scenes with which they are brought into con- 
nection. The best poetry in which mountain scenery has 
been reflected is not found in separate lyrics or descrip- 
tions, but is incidental to poems of larger mould and pur- 
pose. No collection has been made for mountain tourists 
such as sea-sicle visitors may command in the admirable 
" Thalatta," edited by Mr. Higginson. One cannot carry 
a poetic library on a journey among the hills. And the 
author believes that he has done a service to travellers, 
and supplied a need that is often confessed, by inter- 
weaving with his own inadequate prose, passages from 
Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, and Perci- 
val, that interpret the scenery of our highlands, and by 
culling fragments, often equally applicable, from Words- 
worth, Scott, Tennyson, Goethe, Shelley, and Byron. The 
aim has been so to introduce the poetic selections, that 
instead of being mere additions and ornaments, they 
shall continue and complete the description attempted, 
or embody the predominant sentiment of the landscape. 

The author acknowledges the important assistance in 
many instances derived from Rev. Benjamin Willey's 
" Incidents of White Mountain History ; " and all readers 
will confess a large indebtedness to Professor Edward 



PREFACE. 



ix 



Tuckerman, for the very valuable chapters he has com- 
municated on the exploration and botany of the White 
Hills. It is to be regretted that the unexpected bulk 
of the volume has prevented the publication of a list 
of the plants of the mountain region, which was to have 
been printed as an appendix. 
Boston, October 20, 1859. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGES 

The Four Valleys, (Introductory) 1-33 

Exploration of the White Hills. (Contributed by Profes- 
sor Edward Tuckerman.) 34-46 

Lake Winnipiseogee, 47-80 

The Pemigewasset Valley and Franconia, 81-134 

The Saco Valley and Chocorua, 135-185 

The Notch and its Vicinity, 185-229 

The Vegetation of the White Mountains. (Contributed 

by Professor Tuckerman.) 230-241 

The Androscoggin Valley, 243 -299 

The Glen, 299-316 

The Ascent of Mount Washington, 317-369 

The Connecticut Valley,- <• 371 -403 



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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



White Mountain Range from Milan, {Frontispiece.) page 

Mounts Madison and Washington, from Shelburne, 1 

Mount Madison in Gorham, near Lead-Mine Bridge, 9 

View from Walker's Pond, Conway, 13 

Mount Kiarsarge, from Bartlett,--° 14 

Mount Crawford, from the Notch, 15 

Franconia Mountains, from Thornton, 22 

Washington Range, from Carroll, 25 

Washington, Clay, and Jefferson, from the Ridge of Adams, 33 

Lake Winnipiseogee and Belknap Mountains, 53 

Lake Winnipiseogee, from Centre Harbor, 64 

Pine-Trees and Lake Shores, 67 

Squam Lake and Mount Chocorua, 84 

Elm-Trees in Plymouth, N. H., 86 

Welch Mountain, from Campton, 94 

Pemigewasset River and Mount Lafayette, • 96 

Meadows in Campton, 98 

Profile Mountain, Franconia Notch, ■ Ill 

Echo Lake, Franconia, 116 

The Flume, Franconia, 123 

Georgiana Falls,. 126 



xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Franconia Mountain? from Flume House, 128 

Summit of Chocorua, 143 

North Conway and Mount Washington, 153 

Farm-House and Meadow, North Conway, 158 

Meadows and Mote Mountain, 165 

Artist's Fall, North Conway, 170 

Giant's Stairs, Bartlett, 183 

Gate of Crawford Notch, 191 

Crawford Notch, 197 

Gate of the Notch and Mount Webster, 203 

Silver Cascade in the Notch, 206 

Ripley's Falls, on Mount Willey, 208 

White Mountain Range near Brabrook's, 213 

Ammonoosuc Falls, 215 

Giant's Grave, 221 

Meadows of Bethel, 246 

Adams and Madison, near Randolph Hill, 253 

Mount Carter, from Gorham, 258 

Mount Moriah, in Gorham, 260 

Moonlight on Mount Carter, 262 

Berlin Falls, 264 

View from Bridge in Berlin, near Milan, 268 

Madison and Washington, from Shelburne, 278 

Ledges of Mount Hayes, • • 291 

Peabody River and Mount Washington, 301 

White Mountains, from the Glen, 303 

Tuckerman's Ravine and Mount Washington, 309 

Crystal Cascade, 313 

Glen Ellis Fall, 315 

Adams and Madison, from Glen Path, 324 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xv 

PAGE 

Ravine in Mount Adams, from Randolph Hill, 353 

Head Wall of Adams Ravine, 355 

Gateway of Adams Ravine, 350 

Cliffs in Adams Ravine, 360 

Cone of Madison seen over Adams Ravine, 362 

View across the Summit of the Ravine, 365 

Lancaster and White Mountain Range, 374 

Meadows of Lancaster, 375 

Stratford Peaks, 378 

Castellated Ridge of Mount Jefferson, 381 

White Mountain Range from Jefferson Hill, 384 

3 



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THE WHITE HILLS. 



" The best image which the world can give of Paradise, is in the slope of the meadows, 
orchards, and cornfields on the sides of a great Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal snows 
above ; this excellence not being in anywise a matter referable to feeling, or individual prefer- 
ences, but demonstrable by calm enumeration of the number of lovely colors on the rocJcs, the 
varied grouping of the trees, and quantity of noble incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, presented 
to the eye at any given moment." 

" Of the grandeur or expression of the hills, 1 have not spoken ; how far they are great, or 
strong, or terrible, I do not for the moment consider, because vastness, and strength, and terror, 
are not to all minds subjects of desired contemplation. It may make no difference to some men 
whether a natural object be large or small, whether it be strong or feeble. But loveliness of 
color, p erf ectness of form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of structure, are precious to all 
undiseased human minds ; and the superiority of the mountains in all these things to the lowland 
is, I repeat, as measurable as the richness of a painted window matched with a white one, or the 
wealth of a museum compared with that of a simply furnished chamber. They seem to have 
been built for the human race, as at once their schools and cathedrals ; full of treasures of 
illuminated manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the worker, quiet in pale 
cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper. And of these great cathedrals 
of the earth, with their gates of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars of 
snow, and vaults of purple, traversed by the continual stars, — of these, as we have seen, it was 
written, nor long ago, by one of the best of the poor human race for whom they were built, 
wondering in himself for whom their Creator could have made them, and thinking to have 
entirely discerned the Divine intent in them — ' They are inhabited by the Beasts.' " 

RUSKIN. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 

Two groups of mountains are included under the general title 
of "The White Hills,"— one, the Mount Washington chain, or 
the White Mountains proper, — the other, the Franconia range, 
of which Mount Lafayette, a thousand feet lower than Mount 
Washington, is the highest summit. We commence by call- 
ing attention to this simple fact, because many persons, even 
now, in spite of the excellent guide-books, go into New Hampshire, 



2 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



with confused notions of the topography of the region which attracts 
'' them, and leave with no map in their mind's eye of what they have 
seen. We have even seen maps, that were regularly sold in the 
mountain hotels, which represented the Franconia range as a wes- 
terly continuation of the great White Mountain chain, and which 
placed Montreal a little south of Portland. Once a traveller who was 
just entering the hill country, and who seemed to be eager to find 
" The Notch," asked us if it was situated on the top of Mount 
Washington. And one guide-book, that, a very few years ago, was 
sold to travellers from New York and the South, described " The 
Profile " as only a short walk from the Willey House. They are 
about thirty miles apart. We advise all travellers, therefore, to 
study a good map of the mountain region, carefully, before starting, 
and to consult it so faithfully, between the prominent points of their 
journey, that the geography of the country which gives them pleas- 
ure and refreshment, may not be distorted and dislocated in their 
memory. 

There are four avenues of approach to the two highest ranges of 
the New Hampshire mountains, — the valleys of the Saco, the Mem- 
mac, the Androscoggin, and the tributaries of the Connecticut. 
Railroads connect with every one of these natural paths, except the 
Saco. And by each line of railroad one may reach some point 
among the highest hills, on the evening of the same day that he 
leaves Boston, or in about twenty-four hours from New York. 

There is ample reward, as we shall hope to show, in any method 
of approach. Whichever path travellers may select, they 

cannot err 

In this delicious region. 

We shall devote a few pages to a statement of these routes, the 
times they require, and the general character of the scenery to which 
they first introduce the traveller. 

And in doing this, we are entirely independent of any preferences 
for railway or stage companies, and of any influence from the rival- 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



3 



vies of hotels. This book is devoted to the scenery of the mountain 
region. We intend to state fairly from what points the noblest views 
are to be gained, what are the characteristics of each district, and 
along what routes the richest beauty lies ; with no thought in any 
case of the nearness to or distance from any hotel, or stage line, or 
railway station. It is assumed that the public houses are all good, 
and that the stage lines are equally worthy of patronage. And we 
take it for granted, also, that travellers are moved to spend their 
money and time, not primarily to study the gastronomy of Coos 
County in New Hampshire, or to criticize the comparative upholstery 
of the largest houses there ; but to be introduced to the richest feasts 
of loveliness and grandeur that are spread by the Summer around 
the valleys, and to be refreshed by the draperies of verdure, shadow, 
cloud, and color, that are hung by the Creator around and above the 
hills. 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN YALLEY. 

The quickest access to the White Mountain range itself is gained 
by the valley of the Androscoggin. This noble river flows by the 
extreme easterly base of that range, where the forms are the most 
noble and imposing. Within a very few miles of the foot of Mount 
Washington, it receives the Peabody River, which issues from the 
narrow Pinkham Pass between Mount Carter and the White Moun- 
tains. This stream is supplied in part from the southeast slopes of 
the highest mountains of the chain, and is often swollen into a tre- 
mendous torrent by the storms, or the heavy and sudden showers 
that drench their sides. It is the Androscoggin which has engi- 
neered for the Grand Trunk Railway, that connects Portland and 
Montreal, the St. Lawrence with the Atlantic. That Company are 
indebted to it for service in their behalf that was patiently discharged 
centuries before Adam. 

Leaving Boston in the morning by the Boston and Maine, or the 



4 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Eastern Railroad, for Portland, and thence at noon, by the Grand 
Trunk Railway, travellers reach the Alpine House in Gorham, N. H., 
by the cars at about five in the afternoon. They can then proceed 
by stage, seven or eight miles further, along the bank of the Pea- 
body River, to the large hotel in " The Glen," a most charming 
opening, where the four highest elevations of the Mount Washington 
range are in full view from the piazza. If the weather has been dry, 
and the road is hard, this distance can be travelled in about an hour 
and a half. The road rises about eight hundred feet from the rail- 
road in Gorham. In very muddy weather more than two hours are 
needed to reach " The Glen." 

Some travellers have but a very few days for the whole tour of 
the mountain region, and desire, in that time, to see the points of 
interest that are the most striking, and that will produce the strongest 
sensation. These will hurry at once by stage to " The Glen," after their 
day's ride in the cars, that they may reach as quickly as possible the 
very base of Mount Washington. Their object will then be to make 
the ascent of it at once, and hurry around to " The Notch," which 
is thirty-six miles from " The Glen," requiring nine or ten hours by 
stage. Others, though they have more time at command, hasten 
from the cars to " The Glen," because they suppose that there is 
nothing worth staying to see in Gorham. 

But in this they strangely mistake. The scenery is not very 
attractive from the front of the hotel, which was not wisely placed in 
the valley ; but no point in the mountains offers views to be gained 
by walks of a mile or two, and by drives of five or six miles, that are 
more noble and memorable. In the latter part of this volume we 
shall call attention in detail to the attractions with which this whole 
valley, including " The Glen," is encompassed. We will simply say 
here that, for river scenery in connection with impressive mountain 
forms, the immediate vicinity of Gorham surpasses all the other dis- 
tricts from which the highest peaks are visible. The Androscoggin 
sweeps through the village with a broader bed, and in larger volume, 
than the Connecticut shows at Lancaster or Littleton. 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



5 



Only an hour's ride from the hotel carries one to the Berlin Falls, 
where the river pours its whole tide through a narrow rocky gateway. 
It descends a hundred feet in the course of a few hundred yards, and 
then shoots its rapids directly towards the swelling bulk of Mounts 
Madison and Adams that tower but a few miles distant, and form the 
northeastern wall of the Mount Washington chain. It is very sel- 
dom that the spectacle is afforded of a large river running towards 
the highest mountains of the region w T hich it drains. And it is still 
more rare and rich a privilege to find such a view combined with a 
grand cataract, as in the case of the Androscoggin at Berlin. 

Less than an hour's ride to a point below the hotel in Gorham, 
discloses another view of the river, where, broken by charming 
islands, and winding through cultivated meadows, it offers exquisite 
relief to Mount Washington and the two next highest mountains of 
the chain, which are installed in a magnificent group above the 
stream, but a few miles off. No one who sees this picture, at the 
fitting hour of the afternoon and through a favoring air, will be con- 
tent with a single introduction to its complex and symmetrical 
beauty. 

Such views are illustrations of the loss which tourists suffer, if 
they have taste for landscape, by not including a day or two in Gor- 
ham, for the sake of drives along the Androscoggin, in their plans 
of a visit to the eastern side of the great chain. The wilclness and 
majesty of the scenery in " The Glen " we cannot be tempted to 
disparage. Certainly the impression which the hills make upon the 
senses here is singularly grand. The spot is a little plateau, rising 
from the banks of the Peabody stream, and guarded on the south- 
east by the steep, thin, heavily-wooded wall of Mount Carter, and on 
the northwest by the curving bulwarks of the great ridge, over 
which spring the rocky domes or spires of Washington, Clay, Jeffer- 
son, Adams, and Madison. The comparative impressiveness of the 
view cannot easily be overestimated. 

But it is not landscape beauty that is given in " The Glen." To 
have that, there must be meadow, river, and greater distance from 

4 



6 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



the hills, so that they can be seen through large intervening depths 
of air. Going close to a great mountain is like going close to a 
powerfully painted picture ; you see only the roughnesses, the 
blotches of paint, the coarsely contrasted hues, which at the proper 
distance alone are grouped into grandeur and mellowed into beauty. 

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, 
And robes the mountain in its azure hue. 

Even the height of a great mountain is not usually appreciated by 
looking up from its base. If it rose in one wall, and tapered regu- 
larly with a smooth surface, like a pyramid, or Bunker Hill monu- 
ment, the expectations of many persons who rush to the foot of 
Mount Washington, and suppose that they are to receive an over- 
powering ocular impression of a mile of vertical height, would be 
satisfied. But a great mountain is protected by outworks and braced 
by spurs ; its dome retreats modestly by plateaus ; and it is only at 
a distance of some miles that the effect of foreshortening is corrected, 
and it stands out in full royalty. And from such a point of view 
alone, by the added effect of atmosphere and shadows, is its real 
sublimity discerned. The majesty of a mountain is determined by 
the outlines of its bulk ; its expression depends on the distance, 
and the states of the air through which it is seen. 

A visit to New Hampshire supplies the most resources to a trav- 
eller, and confers the most benefit on the mind and taste, when it 
lifts him above mere appetite for wildness, ruggedness, and the feel- 
ing of mass and precipitous elevation, into a perception and love of 
the refined grandeur, the chaste sublimity, the airy majesty overlaid 
with tender and polished bloom, in which the landscape splendor of a 
noble mountain lies. The White Mountain region is singularly rich 
in the varieties of landscape charm which the hills assume. The 
ridges are so well broken by cones and peaks, the slopes are so 
diversified, and the valleys wind at such various angles, that a month 
is insufficient to exhaust the treasures of ever changing beauty which 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



7 



they hold. This is true even for the tourist who goes to study and enjoy 
Nature with his eye alone, and with no intention or capacity to use a 
pencil. Sometimes a distance of ten miles produces a change in the 
aspects of one ridge, as marked as if we had passed to a different 
zone. Certainly North Conway and Gorham, Bethlehem and Bart- 
lett, Jefferson and Shelburne, Berlin and Jackson, could not at first 
be suspected of being set within about equal distance of the same 
chain of hills. 

We should see, then, that by driving as quickly as possible to the 
very bases of the mountains, and by the general eagerness to get the 
coarser stimulant of their wildness, travellers lose the opportunity of 
seeing the deeper landscape loveliness which the mountains wear, and 
of cultivating the sense to which it is revealed. After the first visit, 
at any rate, this should be the chief purpose and aim. 

And by living several weeks in any valley, and driving frequently 
over the principal roads, a person is able to learn, npt only just where 
the best pictures are to be seen, but also what a great difference is 
made in the effect of a landscape by a very slight change of position 
on the road. A spy-glass is good for nothing, as a help to the sight, 
unless you get the exact focus. It is quite remarkable how this law 
of focus-points holds in studying the mountain region. Sometimes 
the beauty of scenes depends on the hour when you visit them, some- 
times on the nicely calculated distance. We have stayed within a few 
miles of a mountain wall, upon which the forenoon spectacle in clear 
weather was worth riding every day to see. But in the afternoon, 
the westerly light made the forests look rusty ; roughened the slopes 
of the ridge ; reduced the height of the massive bastions, and chased 
away their dusky frown. Some hills need rain, or a thick air, to tone 
down the raggedness of their foreground, and reveal the beauty of 
their lines. Others show best under the noon-light ; others demand 
the sunset glow. A prominent charm of North Conway is, that it is 
one of the proper focal points for Mount Washington. Bethlehem 
Village is another. And the same distinction must be awarded to 
portions of. the Androscoggin valley near Gorham, in relation to 
Mount Adams and Mount Madison. 

4 * 



8 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Is it not one of the rich rewards of a long visit in any valley, to be 
able to drive directly to the seats which Nature has fixed along her 
picture-gallery, for studying leisurely, to the best advantage, her 
masterpieces of drawing, her most fascinating combinations of sub- 
limity and loveliness, and the most mystic touches of her pencils of 
light, that edge the " mountain gloom " with " mountain glory ? " 
Travellers in New Hampshire do not think enough of the simple fact 
that every triumph of a human artist is only an illusion, producing 
a semblance of a real charm of air or foliage, of sunset cloud, or dewy 
grass, or mountain splendor, which Nature offers. If a man could 
own all the landscape canvas which the first painters of the world 
have colored, it would not be a tithe so rich an endowment, as if 
Providence should quicken his eye with keener sensibility to the hues 
of the west at evening, the grace of trees, and the pomp of piled or 
drifting clouds. 

We have called attention to this law of focal distance in connec- 
tion with the Androscoggin valley, and to the privilege which belongs 
to Gorham among other places near the White Hills that rightfully 
claim our interest, because it is less known, thus far, than any other 
point of so easy access. And let any traveller who stays in Gorham 
before going to " The Glen," and who is disposed to test this law in 
the most satisfactory and decisive way, drive in an open wagon from 
the Alpine House down the river towards Shelburne. He will find, 
on the return drive, that a perfectly finished picture is shown from a 
small hill, about four miles from the hotel, just at the turn of the 
road that leads to " The Lead-mine Bridge." Mount Madison sits 
on a plateau over the Androscoggin meadows. No intervening 
ridges hide his pyramid, or break the keen lines of his sides. He 
towers clear, symmetrical, and proud, against the vivid blue of the 
western sky. And as if the bright foreground of the meadows 
golden in the afternoon light, and the velvety softness of the vague 
blue shadows that dim the desolation of the mountain, and the hues 
that flame on the peaks of its lower ridges, and the vigor of its 
sweep upwards to a sharp crest, are not enough to perfect the 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



9 



artistic finish of the picture, a frame is gracefully carved out of two 
nearer hills, to seclude it from any neighboring roughness around 
the Peabody valley, and to narrow into the most shapely proportions 
the plateau from which it soars. It is not probable that the tourist 




will find any other point in the region, where one of the White Moun 
tains is singled out from the rest and drawn so firmly in isolated 
grandeur. And yet he will find that a quarter of a mile, either way, 
from the insignificant hill on which his wagon rests, spoils the charm 
of the picture by breaking the frame, or cutting away the base, or 
shutting out some portion of the meadow foreground, or extinguishing 
the flashes of the silvery river. 

This view, during the long midsummer days, can be enjoyed after 



10 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



tea, and before sunset, when the light is most propitious, on the same 
day that the traveller leaves Boston. A drive of three quarters of 
an hour from the Alpine House in Gorham, on the Shelburne road, 
is the only exertion it costs. Or, the same time devoted to a wagon 
ride towards Berlin, or towards Randolph, will bring out other moun 
tains of the range, framed off in similar ways from the chain, in 
majesty equally impressive ; though no other view, perhaps, combines 
so many elements of a fascinating mountain-landscape. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 

By the Saco valley the tourist is led to the extreme westerly base 
of the Mount Washington range, as by the Androscoggin valley he 
reaches, at once, the extreme easterly declivities. The nearest point 
to the Saco route accessible by railroad is the shore of Lake Winni- 
piseogee. The borders of this charming sheet of water may be 
reached in about five hours. One can go by the Boston and Maine 
railroad, connecting with the Cocheco railroad at Dover, which ends 
at Alton Bay, or by the Boston, Concord, and Montreal road, which 
has a station on the shore of the lake, at Weir's. By the Alton Bay 
route, the steamer traverses the length of the lake thirty miles to 
Centre Harbor ; from Weir's, the steamer's track is across the lake 
diagonally to Centre Harbor, and is twelve miles. We shall devote 
a separate chapter to the scenery of Lake Winnipiseogee, and of its 
immediate neighborhood, and therefore will not detain the reader 
here with any prelude about its attractions. 

From Centre Harbor, the distance to the base of the White Moun- 
tain range at the Crawford House, which is situated just beyond the 
further gateway of " The Notch," is sixty-two miles. It is travelled 
wholly by stage. Until within a very few years, this was the only 
route by which the heart of the hill-country in New Hampshire 
could be reached. And we question if now, when the cars carry 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



11 



visitors so much more speedily to villages much nearer the two great 
ranges, so much pleasure and profit are gained from the jouruey, as 
when the approach was gradually made along the line of the Sand- 
wich range to the Saco at Conway ; and when every traveller went 
away with delightful recollections of the ride through Bartlett, up 
the narrowing and darkening valley, which gradually prepares the 
eye and mind for the desolation and the gloom of " The Notch," 
through which the Saco, as a mere rivulet, hurries towards the 
meadows below. 

The journey from Centre Harbor to "The 'Notch" is naturally 
divided by Conway, where there is a large and excellent hotel. 
Leaving Boston in the morning, crossing Lake Winnipiseogee and 
stopping only to dine at Centre Harbor, Conway is the nearest point 
to the Mount Washington range that can be reached by regular stage 
the same night. This is still thirty-two miles from the Crawford 
House and 6i The Notch." If the roads are in tolerable condition, 
and the afternoon is not excessively hot, the passengers, who make 
thus their first excursion to the Hills, will not only be interested in 
the varied forms of the Sandwich range, but will have a glorious 
view, in the evening light, from the top of Eaton Hill, before entering 
Conway, of 

the mountains piled 
Heavily against the horizon of the north, 
Like summer thunder-clouds. 

They might be mistaken for clouds, until one sees that their form is 
permanent, and that their edges, firmly drawn and not fleecy as 
cloud-shapes are, show a delicate gleam of thoroughly tempered 
steel against the evening sky. What refreshment for the fatigues of 
the journey, and what glorious promise for the morrow, in those cool, 
dark towers and domes that swell along the northwest, and on whose 
heights no tropic-breath is ever blown ! 

Conway is too generally considered now a mere resting-place for 
the night. Many persons, if they should fail to rise early enough 
for the morning stage to " The Notch," would hardly know what to 



12 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



do with a day thus left unemployed upon their hands. And yet, if 
they have any taste for landscape, they might take excursions by 
wagon from the hotel, that would make them grateful for the inter- 
ruption of their journey. Let them drive, for instance, some nine 
miles to Chocorua Lake, in which the rugged, torn, lonely, and 
proud-peaked mountain reflects the ravage of its slopes and the vigor 
of its hues, — and, when a week is over, let them say if they would will- 
ingly drop this picture from the portfolio of their memory. Many 
of the most competent artists, who have made faithful studies during 
summer vacations in New Hampshire, award superiority to Choco- 
rua for picturesqueness over any view that they have found of Mount 
Washington. 

After this view is taken, (or instead of it, if there is time only for 
one,) let an excursion be made to Gould's Pond, about equally dis- 
tant in another direction. Chocorua and the Mote Mountain will 
form many charming associations, during the winding drive, until 
Potter's Farm is reached. Here is a combination of lake and 
mountain scenery different from anything to be found between Centre 
Harbor and " The Notch." Fortunate will the tourist be, who can 
find any other view, along this whole favorite avenue to the moun- 
tains, that he can call more fascinating. The lake is a fine broad 
expanse of water, with many islands. The Rattlesnake range, one 
of the guardian walls of North Conway, stretches off to the right, 
overtopped by the feminine beauty of the slopes of Kiarsarge. To 
the left are " The Ledges " and the neighboring heights. A little 
below these, and on nearly the same line, rise the Mote and Choco- 
rua, towering over intervening hills. And in the centre, the White 
Mountains, back of all, heave their bulk crowned by the dome of 
Mount Washington. Any grand landscape-view of the highest range, 
with a lake or a wide river prospect in the foreground, is so rare, 
that special attention should be called to each of them in any guide- 
book. Yet not one in a thousand of the summer visitors to New 
Hampshire has ever seen either of these views, so easily accessible 
from Conway. Not one in a thousand, probably, has ever heard of 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 13 

the scene which we last described. Nature cunningly hides the 
gems of her landscape a little away from the noisy and dusty paths, 
and imposes the condition of leisure, calmness of mind, and rever- 
ent seeking, before they shall be enjoyed. 




From Conway to " The Notch " the distance is thirty-two miles, 
and is travelled by stage in half a clay ; so that from Boston to the 
Crawford House, at the foot of the White Mountain range, resting in 
Conway only, requires, by the Saco route, a day and a half. The 
whole ride up from the hotel in Conway, if the clay is clear, is a con- 
tinuous delight to one who has an outside seat on the stage. By the 
meadows of North Conway, and in full view of the White Mountain 
battlements that frown upon that village from the north ; by the 

5 



14 



THE WHITE HILLS 



charming Kiarsarge, which, long after it is passed, draws the eye to 
look back upon it, still hungry for the exquisite droop of its folds, as 
of drapery falling from a ring ; through the Bartlett village, which is 
only a long winding lane among steep hills, cool with thick and dark 




green verdure ; into, and soon out of, the little mountain basin over 
which the clumsy crest of Mount Crawford peers — a perpetual monu- 
ment to the old patriarch of the district, who kept, for years, a small 
inn for travellers in this secluded bowl, and drove a team, four in 
hand, to the Crawford House, when he was over eighty ; and six 
miles further on, until two mountain lines shoot across each other, 
and, by a sudden turn of the road, open, and allow us to ride into 
the pass, where 

the abrupt mountain breaks, 
And seems with its accumulated crags 
To overhang the world; — 

thus we are swept on, and find that no two miles of the ride are 
monotonous, and that each hour introduces us to scenery of fresh 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 15 

character and charm. After the Crawford House is reached through 
the upper gateway of " The Notch," where there is just room, under 
the decaying crags that face each othei% for the little mill-stream of 
the Saco and the road ; after Mount Willard has been ascended, and 




Washington scaled, and the whole mountain visit is finished, we may 
remember our first sight of " The Notch," and the subsequent expe- 
rience, in the language of Whittier : — 

We had checked our steeds 
Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall 
Is piled to heaven; and through the narrow rift 
Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet 
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar, 
Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind 
Comes burdened with the everlasting moan 
Of forests and of far-off waterfalls, 
We had looked upward where the summer sky, 
Tasselled with clouds, light-woven by the sun, 



I 



16 THE WHITE HILLS. 

Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags, 

O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land 

Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed 

The high source of the Saco; and, bewildered 

In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills, 

Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud, 

The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop 

Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains 

Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick 

As meadow-molehills — the far sea of Casco 

A white gleam on the horizon of the east; 

Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills; 

Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kiarsarge 

Lifting his Titan forehead to the sun. 

All as true as it is vivid, except the " Titan forehead" of Kiarsarge. 
No summit so little deserves that title. Queenly forehead would be 
more appropriate. 

But we have skipped North Conway, of which the graceful moun- 
tain just spoken of is only one of the gems, in our notice of the ride 
from Centre Harbor to " The Notch." It is not because we have 
overlooked it, but because we reserve a separate chapter for it, far- 
ther on. This village, five miles above Conway Centre, and twenty- 
five miles from " The Notch," is not to be considered, or alluded to, 
as one point on the route, to be merely driven through. It is a place 
to stay in, where the mountains are to be studied, where the mind is 
to rest as in a natural art-gallery, and in an atmosphere saturated 
with beauty. 

From the heart of Waumbek Methna, from the lake that never fails, 
Falls the Saco in the green lap of Conway's intervales; 
There, in wild and virgin freshness, its waters foam and flow, 
As when Darby Field first saw them, two hundred years ago. 

But, vexed in all its seaward course with bridges, dams, and mills, 
How changed is Saco's stream, how lost its freedom of the hills, 
Since travelled Jocelyn, factor Vines, and stately Champernoon 
Heard on its banks the gray wolf's howl, the trumpet of the loon! 

With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of fire and steam, 
Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him like a dream, 
Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward far and fast 
The mile-stones of the fathers, the landmarks of the past. 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



17 



The steeds of fire and steam do not vex the air of North Conway 
even with any echoes as yet ; and it is not till it passes beyond the 
meadows which lie under " The Ledges " and " The Mote," that the, 
Saco is " vexed " with " dams and mills." As to " bridges," the 
Bartlett farmers can testify that the Saco vexes them, in every time 
of freshet, more than it is troubled by their piers. 

North Conway has been the favorite resort among the mountains 
for artists. And after the first of July, its hotels and private houses 
are often crowded with visitors who desire to spend several days at 
least, if not several weeks, in quiet enjoyment of mountain scenery. 
Why is it that so few persons make provision, in the programme ' of 
their tour for waiting two or three days in one spot, and for taking 
the short jaunts, in their own hired wagon, to the rarer and secluded 
landscapes in which the glories of the mountain districts are con- 
centrated ? Such is the true way to get adequate and lasting 
impressions of the character of the hill country. People, in the 
majority of instances, reach Conway Centre the same clay that they 
left Boston and caught their first view of Winnipiseogee. They 
hurry through North Conway to " The Notch," whether it rains or 
shines, the day after. They ascend Mount Washington the third 
day ; and, on the fourth, are driven to Franconia for an equally 
rapid glimpse of its treasures ; or, perhaps not waiting for that, push 
on to Littleton for the Connecticut valley cars. A large proportion 
of the summer travellers in New Hampshire bolt the scenery, as a 
man, driven by work, bolts his dinner at a restaurant. Sometimes, 
indeed, where railroads will allow, as on the eastern side, they will 
gobble some of the superb views between two trains, with as little 
consciousness of any flavor or artistic relish, as a turkey has in swal- 
lowing corn. One might as well be a railroad conductor for a week 
on an up-country train, so far as any effect on mind or sentiment is 
concerned, or any real acquaintance with Nature is gained, as to 
take to what we Yankees call " pleasuring" in such style. 

Where persons do not have a margin of a few days, they may lose 
the whole object of their journey. It sometimes happens that not 



18 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



more than a few perfect hours for sight-seeing are drawn out of the 
week. Day after day may turn up a blank. Perhaps there is rain ; 
or vapors are heavily folded over the great ridges ; or there is inces- 
sant sunshine, without any clouds to give relief to the eyes and ex- 
pression to the hills ; or a slaty and chilly sky spreads a mournful 
monotony over scenes that you want to see transfigured by the 

Mysteries of color daily laid, 
Bv the sun in light and shade. 

And then a week may be given, in which, to those who can stay in a 
place like North Conway or Gorham, every day will be a prize. 
South wind, north wind, and west wind will come by turns, and do 
their best. 

It may blow north, it still is warm; 

Or south, it still is clear; 
Or east, it smells like a clover farm ; 

Or west, no thunder fear. 

Varying with each hour the favored visitors will have the full range 
of summer views, the anthology of a season's art, gathered into a 
portion of a single week. The mountains seem to overhaul their 
meteorological wardrobe. They will array themselves, by rapid 
turns, in their violets and purples and mode colors, their cloaks of 
azure and caps of gold, their laces and velvets, and their iris-scarfs. 

One day it will be so clear, that, for the eye, space seems to have 
been half annihilated. Every sharp ridge lies in the sky like the 
curving blade of an adze, and the pinnacles tower sharp as spears. 
Then the few shadows that spot the slopes seem engraved upon them. 
Such is the day for proof-impressions of the roughness and ragged- 
ness, the cuts and scars, the ravines and spurs, the boundary lines 
of shrubbery and rock, that make up the surface of the mountains. 
In an air like this, from the top of Mount Washington, the vessels in 
Portland harbor will be distinctly descried by the glass. 

Then will come a day sacred to great clouds. How majestically 
they will sail through the azure, perplexing the eye with their double 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



19 



beauty, — the blazing fleece which moves and melts in the upper blue, 
and the fantastic photographs which they leave upon the hills below, 
often draping a mountain like Madison or Kiarsarge in a leopard-skin 
of spotted light and gloom ! 

They rear their sunny copes 
Like heavenly Alps, with cities on their slopes, 
Built amid glaciers — bristling fierce with towers, 
Turrets, and battlements of warlike powers — 
Jagged with priestly pinnacles and spires — 
And crowned with domes, that glitter in the fires 
Of the slant sun, like smithied silver bright; — 
The capitals of Cloudland. 

Or perhaps the south wind fills the air with dusty gold, and makes 
each segment of a district that w r as prosaic enough a week before, 
seem a sweet fraction of Italy. Possibly, it tries its hand at mists. 
Then what mischief and frolic ! It brindles the mountain sides with 
them. Or it stretches them across their length, as though it meant 
to weave all the vapors which the air could supply, into a narrow and 
interminable web of fog. Now, again, it twines the mists around 
their necks ; then it smothers the peaks with them, and soon tears 
them apart to let the grim heads look out ; and before long, in more 
serious mood, it bids them stream up and off, like incense from mighty 
altars. Sometimes, for half a day it will revel in a rollicking temper, 
and will wind a ruff around the neck of solemn Chocorua ; or it will 
adorn the crown of Kiarsarge with a trailing veil of vapory Mechlin ; 
or it will compel the bald head of Adams, much to the improvement 
of his phrenology, to sport a towering peruke, with a queue a few 
miles long streaming upon the breeze. And then there will be sun- 
sets and dawns, each of which would amply repay for the journey. 

The difficulty is, that in rushing so fast as many of us do through 
the mountains, the mountains do not have time to come to us. These 
old settlers are tardy in forming intimate acquaintanceships. With 
them " confidence is a plant of slow growth." Their externals they 
give to the eye in a moment, on a clear day ; but their character, 



20 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



their aspects of superior majesty, their fleeting loveliness of hue, — all 
that makes them a refreshment, a force, a joy of the rest of our year, 
they show only to the calmer eye, to the man who waits a clay or 
two in order to unthink his city habits, domesticate himself as their 
guest, and bide their time. If we could learn, or be content, to use 
a week at some central point of any valley, instead of hurrying 
through all of them, — to spend the same money at one spot that is 
usually spread over the lengthened journey, — to take the proper times 
for driving quietly to the best positions, — we should see vastly more, 
as any of the intelligent visitors in North Conway will assure us. 
We should understand not only topography, but scenery. We 
should not carry away jumbled recollections like dissolving views, but 
clear pictures in memory. The mountains would come to us, which, 
it is said, they refused to do for the author of the Koran. 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 

The Pemigewasset is the main source of the Merrimack. It opens 
the natural avenue to the Franconia range, which is easily reached 
from Boston in a day. By the Boston, Concord, and Montreal Rail- 
road, taking trains which connect with that road either from the sta- 
tion of the Boston and Maine or the Boston and Lowell railways, the 
traveller reaches Plymouth, N. H., which is about one hundred and 
twenty miles from Boston, a little after noon. Having dined in Plym- 
outh, he takes the stage for either of the two excellent public-houses 
in the JFranconia Notch — the Flume House, which is twenty-five 
miles distant, or the Profile House, which is five miles further. 
Either of these houses will be reached before sunset, and the tourist 
will have the benefit of the afternoon light, while he 

tracks 

The winding Pemigewasset, overhung 

By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks, 



THE FOUE VALLEYS. 



21 



Or lazily gliding through its intervals, 

From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam 

Of sunlit waters. 

The whole ride, if the day is pleasant, will afford various and per- 
petual delight. The valley, for most of the way, is broader than 
that of the Saco above North Conway, and gives a larger number 
of distinct pictures on the upward drive. The hills do not huddle 
around the road ; the distances are more artistic ; and the lights and 
shades have better chance to weave their more subtle witchery upon 
the distant mountains that bar the vision, — upon the whale back of 
Moosehillock, and the crags and spires that face each other in the 
Franconia Notch. 

The picture of the Pemigewasset, seen from a bend of the road in 
the little village of Campton, will be one of the prominent pleasures 
of the afternoon. How briskly it cuts its way in sweeping curves 
through the luxuriant fields ! and with what pride it is watched for 
miles of its wanderings by the Welch mountain completely filling the 
background, from which its tide seems to be pouring, and upon whose 
shoulders, perhaps, the clouds are busily dropping fantastic shawls of 
shadow ! In this part of its course, the river is scarcely less free 
than it was in the clays which Whittier alludes to, in his noble apos- 
trophe to the Merrimack : — 

Oh, child of that white-crested mountain whose springs 
Gush forth in the shade of the cliff eagle's wings, 
Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters shine, 
Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the dwarf pine. 

From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so lone, 
From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of stone, 
By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and free. 
Thy mountain-born brightness glanced clown to the sea' 

No bridge arched thy waters save that where the trees 
Stretched their long arms above thee, and kissed in the breeze: 
No sound save the lapse of the waves on thy shores, 
The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars. 

But the most striking views which the ride from Plymouth to the 

6 



22 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Flume House affords, are to be found after passing the " Grafton 
House " in Thornton. The distant Notch does not show as jet the 
savageness of its teeth ; but the arrangement of the principal Fran- 
conia mountains in lialf-sexagon — so that we get a strong impression 




of their mass, and yet see their separate steely edges, gleaming 
with different lights, running down to the valley — is one of the rare 
pictures in New Hampshire. What a noble combination, — those 
keen contours of the Haystack pyramids, and the knotted mus- 
cles of Mount Lafayette, beyond ! He hides his rough head, as far 
as possible, behind his neighbor, but pushes out that limb which looks 
like an arm from a statue of a struggling Hercules that some Titan 
Angelo might have hewn. A visitor with an eye for these strongest 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



23 



lines of expression in the mountains has finely said : " As in Flax- 
man's drawings of Homeric heroes and horses, one fine hair-stroke 
reveals the whole beauty and force of that regal fancy, so these out- 
lines of the hills, by the Divine Hand, wonderfully express the 
immense vitality curbed, but not lost, which shot them up from cen- 
tral abysses." The downward roll of that spur of Lafayette strik- 
ingly resembles the convolutions of the famous Trinity Cape, on the 
Saguenay. 

The Pemigewasset valley was early settled by Scotch emigrants. 
Possibly they were attracted by some resemblance to the Highland 
scenery of their old home. No mountain of Perthshire or Inverness 
is so high as Lafayette ; and they could not have seen, in the 
Trossachs, mountain-walls more sheer and threatening than " The 
Notch " would have showed them, if they could have clambered into 
it before the present road was made. In fact, a visitor familiar with 
Scott's poetry, driving up to " The Notch " and into it for the first 
time, about sunset, would recall this passage from " The Lady of 
the Lake," and feel that it might have been written for Franconia : — - 

The western waves of ebbing day 
Eoll'd o'er the glen their level way; 
Each purple peak, each flinty spire, 
Was bathed in floods of living fire. 
But not a setting beam could gloAv 
Within the dark ravines below, 
Where twined the path, in shadow hid, 
Eound many a rocky pyramid, 
Shooting abruptly from the dell 
Its thunder-splinter' d pinnacle; ' 
Eound many an insulated mass, 
The native bulwarks of the pass, 
Huge as the tower which builders vain 
Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain. 
The rocky summit, split and rent, 
Form'd turret, dome, or battlement, 
Or seem'd fantastically set 
With cupola or' minaret, 
Wild crests as pagod ever decked, 
Or mosque of eastern architect. 



24 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Nor were these earth-born castles bare 
Nor lacked they many a banner fair; 
For from their shiver'd brows display'a, 
Far o'er the unfathomable glade, 
All twinkling with the dew-drops sheen 
The brier-rose fell in streamers green 
And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes 
Waved in the west-wind's summer sighs. 

Of the resources of wildness and beauty within the five miles of the 
Franconia pass — the Eagle Cliffs, the Profile, the Basin, the Flume, 
the Cascades, and the ascent of Mount Lafayette, we are to treat, of 
course, in another chapter. Now, we must briefly allude to the 
approach to the mountains by 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 

The same train which is left at Plymouth by those who wish to go 
directly by stage to the Flume House, will carry passengers some 
seventy miles north of Plymouth, to Littleton. This village is on the 
Lower Amonoosuc River, very near its junction with the Connecticut. 
The cars that leave Boston in the morning reach Littleton about 
five in the afternoon. From Littleton it is eleven miles to the Profile 
House in the Franconia Notch, and twenty-two miles to the Crawford 
House, near the White Mountain Notch. So that a traveller, on the 
same day that he leaves Boston, can reach the great Franconia 
range from the northwest, before the purple has faded from Lafay- 
ette, and the expression of the Profile has faded out in the twilight. 
Or, later in the evening, about nine o'clock, he can be landed by stage 
at the gateway of the Notch ; or can stop at the White Mountain 
House, five miles nearer to Littleton than the Crawford House, 
and thus save an hour's ride after dark. To reach Franconia the 
same day, from Boston, one can choose between the Littleton route 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



25 



with its eleven miles staging, or the Plymouth route, up the Pemige- 
wasset, with the afternoon stage drive of twenty-five or thirty miles. 
But if one desires to reach the White Mountain Notch on the 
same day that he starts from Boston, the Littleton route is the only 
one that will enable him to do it. By the Saco valley, it will be 
remembered, a day and a half of continuous travel is required, with 
sixty miles of stage riding. 





The peculiarity of this approach to the mountains is that the 
highest ranges are seen first of all. The ride from Littleton to Beth- 
lehem brings into full view the whole extent of the White Mountain 
range, and also the grand outlines of Mount Lafayette and its neigh- 



26 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



boring peaks. The stages reach Bethlehem at about the time in the 
afternoon when the light is most favorable, and begins to flush the 
Mount Washington range with the richest coloring. It is a great 
pity that Bethlehem is not one of the prominent stopping-places for 
travellers who seek the mountain region. No village commands so 
grand a panoramic view. The whole horizon is fretted with moun 
tains. If the public houses here were more attractive or commo- 
dious, persons could be tempted to pass two or three days ; and they 
would find themselves more and more fascinated with the views from 
the village of the solid pyramid of Lafayette, and of the steep slopes, 
crowned by the dome of Mount Washington, whose cascades feed the 
Connecticut. 

Bethlehem is about as far from Mount Washington as North Con- 
way is, and lies on the opposite side. The drives in the neighborhood, 
commanding as they do, within short distances, both the Franconia 
and the White Mountain Notches, and the meadows of the Con- 
necticut, are very varied and delightful. The town lies, also, at the 
favorable landscape-distance from the hills. An enthusiastic villager 
used to speak to us with great contempt of the Notches in which 
people rushed to burrow like moles, and remarked, " I tell 'em, if 
they want to see scenyury, this is the place." Whether his taste for 
natural beauty was affected by the fact that he kept a small public 
house in Bethlehem, is a question we will not raise. That his opin- 
ion was correct is more clear. 

The Connecticut valley is also reached from the eastern side, by 
the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada. This road crosses the Con- 
necticut at Northumberland, some thirty miles above Gorham. From 
this point it is nine miles, by stage, to Lancaster, N. H. ; which is 
one of the most charming villages the Connecticut can boast. By 
this route one can leave Boston in the morning, and reach Lancaster 
between eight and nine in the evening. This town, which is the 
county seat of Coos, has not been prominent as a place of resort for 
the lovers of mountain scenery ; but we are sure that it is destined 
hereafter to attract a far larger proportion of visitors and guests. If 



THE FOUE VALLEYS. 



27 



the Grand Trunk Railway had passed through it, according to the first 
intention, it would doubtless have been the great rival of North Con- 
way. A new, spacious, and excellent public house has now been 
finished in Lancaster, and it must hereafter take its place as one 
of the most attractive resorts, in the near neighborhood of the 
mountains. 

The drives about Lancaster for interest and beauty cannot be sur- 
passed. The river flows directly through the tow T n, and its intervale 
has a never wearying charm. 

The tasselled maize, full grain or clover, 
j Far o'er the level meadow grows, 

And through it, like a wayward rover, 
The noble river gently flows. 

Majestic elms, with trunks unshaken 
By all the storms an age can bring, 
Trail sprays whose rest the zephyrs waken, 
Yet lithesome with the juice of spring. 

Grand combinations, too, of the river and its meadows with the Fran- 
conia range and the vast White Mountain wall, are to be had in short 
drives, beyond the river, upon the Lunenburg hills. There are sev- 
eral hills of moderate height around the town from which picturesque 
sections of the mountain surroundings are to be enjoyed. The Fran- 
conia Notch may be reached in four or five hours ; and afternoon 
drives to various points within ten miles can be taken, where both the 
great ranges are included within the sweep of the eye. We would 
especially speak of the spectacle from Bray Hill, on the edge of 
Whitefield, around which Nature spreads, about five in the afternoon, 
as gorgeous a feast of color on the meadows and cultivated uplands, 
that lie within the wide circle of larger mountain guards, as New 
Hampshire can supply. 

A ride of eight miles to the village of Jefferson, where the road 
from Gorham unites with the Cherry Mountain road to " The Notch," 
gives, as we shall show hereafter, the very grandest view of the 
White Mountain range, and of Mount Lafayette, also, which can be 



28 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



found. Here Mount Washington towers, in satisfactory majesty, 
above the whole curving line of the confederate summits. 

Stern Sagamore! where are the tawny tribes 
Who gave to thee a name, and roved supreme 
Around thy foot? the travelling sun, each day 
Returning from the prairies of the West, 
Will tell thee he has seen their sepulchres 
. Where the lank wolf the lonely desert roams ;— 
Thou hast survived them all, and to this day 
Thou gazest upon argent streams, and lakes 
Dreaming among the hills, and clustering elms, 
That seem like columns of decaying fanes, 
About whose mouldering shafts and capitals 
The ivy clings most beautiful but sad; 
And thou beholdest too the haunts of man — 
His rural homes embowered 'mid waving groves, 
His yellow harvests billowing in the breeze. 
And the proud monuments that mark his skill, 
For which he lauds himself unto the skies; — 
But dost thou not contemplate by the side 
Of these his works the solemn village spires, 
Whose frequent curfews knoll from day to day 
Reluctant generations to the grave? 
Our very works are tombstones to our dust! 
Achilles rears his mound and saith, "I lived! " 
God utters forth a voice, and mountains rise 
And whisper to eternity, "I am!" 

What a pity that the hills could not have kept the names which 
the Indian tribes gave to them ! The names which the highest peaks 
of the great range bear were given to them in 1820, by a party from 
Lancaster. How absurd the order is ! Beginning at " The Notch," 
and passing around to Gorham, these are the titles of the sum- 
mits which are all seen from the village just spoken of: Webster, 
Clinton, Pleasant, Franklin, Monroe, Washington, Clay, Jefferson, 
Adams, Madison. What a wretched jumble ! These are what we 
have taken in exchange for such Indian words as Agiochook, which 
is the baptismal title of Mount Washington, and for words like Am- 
monoosuc, Moosehillock, Contoocook, Pennacook, Pentucket. Think, 
too, of the absurd association of names which the three mountains that 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



29 



rise over the Franconia Notch are insulted with — Mount Lafayette, 
Mount Pleasant, and Mount Liberty ! How much better to have 
given the highest peaks of both ranges the names of some great 
tribes or chiefs, such as Saugus, Passaconaway, Uncanoonuc, Won- 
nalancet, Weetamoo, Bomazeen, Winnepurkit, Kancamagus, — words 
that chime with Saco, and Merrimack, and Sebago, and Connecticut, 
and Ossipee, and Androscoggin. 

Even the general name, " White Mountains," is usually inappli- 
cable during the season in which visitors see them. All unwooded 
summits of tolerable eminence are white in the winter ; and in the 
summer, the mountains of the Washington range, seen at a distance 
in the ordinary daylight, are pale, dim green. The first title, " Crys- 
tal Hills," which the white explorers gave them, it would have been 
better to have retained. But how much richer is the Indian name 
" Waumbek ! " The full title they applied to them was Waumbek- 
Methna, which signifies, it is said, " Mountains with snowy fore- 
heads." Yet not a public house in all the mountain region bears 
the name of Waumbek, which is so musical, and which might 
be so profitably exchanged for Alpine House, or Glen House, or 
Profile House, or Tip-Top House. We are surprised, indeed, 
that the appellation " Kan Ran Vugarty," signifying the continued 
likeness of a gull, which it is said one Indian tribe applied to 
the range, has not been adopted by some landlord as a title to a 
hotel, or in some village as the name of a river, on account of its 
barbarity. 

Would this be worse than to give the name " Israel's River " to 
the charming stream, fed from the rills of Washington and Jefferson, 
which flows through the Jefferson meadows, and empties into the 
Connecticut ? The Indian name was Singrawac. Yet no trace of 
this charming name is left in Jefferson or Lancaster. Think of put- 
ting " Mount Monroe," or " Mount Clay," or " Mount Franklin," or 
"Peabody River," or " Berlin Falls," or "Israel's River," into 
poetry. The White Mountains have lost the privilege of being en- 



30 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



shrined in such sonorous rhythm and such melody as Longfellow has 
given to the Indian names in his lines : — 

Down the rivers, o'er the prairies, 
Came the warriors of the nations, 
Came the Delawares and Mohawks, 
Came the Choctaws and Camanches, 
Came the Shoshonies and Blackfeet, 
Came the Pawnees and Omawhaws, 
Came the Mandans and Dacotahs, 
Came the Hurons and Ojibways, 
All the warriors drawn together 
By the signal of the Peace-Pipe, 
To the mountains of the prairie, 
To the great red Pipe-stone quarry. 

The eastern wilderness of Maine is more favored in this respect, of 
which Whittier has written in his poem of "The Lumbermen : " — 

Where the crystal Ambijejis 

Stretches broad and clear, 

And Millnoket's pine-black ridges 

Hide the browsing deer: 

Where, through lakes and wide morasses, 

Or through rocky walls, 

Swift and strong, Penobscot passes 

White with foamy falls; 

Where, through clouds, are glimpses given 

Of Katahdin's sides, — 

Eock and forest piled to heaven, 

Torn and ploughed by slides! 

Far below, the Indian trapping, 

In the sunshine warm ; 

Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping 

Half the peak in storm. 

O'er us, to the southland heading, 

Screams the gray wild-goose; 

On the night air sounds the treading 

Of the brindled moose. 

Noiseless creeping, while we're sleeping, 

Frost his task- work plies; 

Soon, his icy bridges heaping, 

Shall our log-piles rise. 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



31 



The lumbermen work, also, during the fall and winter, m the wilder- 
ness that slopes into Randolph and Jefferson. They pile the hem- 
locks and the hackmetacks by the stream, so that 

When, with sounds of smothered thunder, 

On some night of rain, 

Lake and river break asunder 

Winter's weakened chain, 

Down the wild March flood shall bear them 

To the saw-mill's wheel, 

Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear them 

With his teeth of steel. 

But " Whipple's Grant," and " Hart's Location," and " Israel's 
River," and " Knot-Hole " road, are not so redolent of poetry as 
crystal Ambijejis and Katahdin and Millnoket. The lower portion 
of New Hampshire is more fortunate in this respect, as the following 
passage from Whittier's " Bridal of Pennacook " will convince our 
readers delightfully : — 

The trapper, that night on Turee's brook, 
And the weary fisher on Contoocook, 
Saw over the marshes and through the pine, 
And down on the river the dance-lights shine. 

For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo 
The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo, 
And laid at her father's feet that night 
His softest furs and wampum white. 

From the Crystal Hills to the far Southeast 
The river Sagamores came to the feast; 
And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook, 
Sat down on the mats of Pennacook. 

They came from Sunapee's shore of rock, 
From the snowy sources of Snooganock, 
And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake 
Their pine-cones in Umbagog lake. 

From Ammonoosuck's mountain pass 
Wild as his home came Chepewass; 
And the Keenomps of the hills which throw 
Their shade on the Smile of Manito. 
7* 



32 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



With pipes of peace and bows unstrung, 
Glowing with paint came old and young, 
In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed 
To the dance and feast the Bashaba made. 

Bird of the air and beast of the field, 
All which the woods and waters yield, 
On dishes of birch and hemlock piled, 
Garnished and graced that banquet wild. 

Steaks of the brown bear fat and large, 
From the rocky slopes of the Kiarsarge; 
Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook, 
And salmon spear'd in the Contoocook; 

Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick 
In the gravelly bed of the Ottemic, 
And small wild hens in reed-snares caught 
From the banks ot Sondagardee brought; 

Pike and perch from the Suncook taken, 
Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken, 
Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog, 
And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog. 

But the Indian names and legends are shorn from the upper moun- 
tain region. They have not been caught for our literature. The 
valleys are almost as bare of them as the White Mountain cones are 
of verdure. What a pity it is that our great hills 

Piled to the clouds, — our rivers overhung 

By forests which have known no other change 

For ages, than the budding and the fall 

Of leaves — our valleys lovelier than those 

Which the old poets sang of— should but figure 

On the apocryphal chart of speculation 

As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges, 

Rights and appurtenances, which make up 

A Yankee Paradise — unsung, unknown 

To beautiful tradition; even their names, 

Whose melody yet lingers like the last 

Vibration of the red man's requiem, 

Exchanged for syllables significant 

Of cotton mill and rail-car! 

We can scarcely find a settler who can tell any story learned in 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



o3 



childhood of Indian bravery, suffering, cruelty, or love. Looking up 
to the great range from the village of Jefferson, we must say with 
Hiawatha : — 

Lo! how all things fade and perish! 
From the memory of the old men 
Fade away the great traditions, 
The achievements of the warriors, 
The adventures of the hunters, 
All the wisdom of the Medas, 
All the craft of the Wabenos, 
All the marvellous dreams and visions, 
Of the Jossakeeds, the Prophets! 



34 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



HISTORY OF THE EXPLORATION OF THE WHITE HILLS. 

" You ask," he said, " what guide 

Me through trackless thickets led, 

Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide? 

I found the water's bed. 

The watercourses were my guide; 

I travelled grateful by their side, 

Or through their channel dry; 

They led me through the thicket damp, 

Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp 

Through beds of granite cut my road, 

And their resistless friendship showed; 

The falling waters led me, 

The foodful waters fed me, 

And brought me to the lowest land, 

Unerring to the ocean sand. 

The moss upon the forest bark 

Was polestar when the night was dark, 

The purple berries in the wood 

Supplied me necessary food; 

For Nature ever faithful is 

To such as trust her faithfulness." 

Before proceeding to the chapters on the avenues to the highest 
mountains, and the pictures which they supply, let us glance at the 
most important visits -which have been made to the loftiest range for 
exploration and for the purposes of science. 

The first mention of the White Mountains in print, occurs in John 
Josselyn's New England's Rarities Discovered, printed in 1672, a 
book now chiefly memorable as furnishing the earliest account of our 
plants ; and this writer, in his Voyages, printed a year or two later, 
gives us the best part of the mythology of our highest hills. The 
story, as J osselyn tells it, is curious enough ; and its resemblance to 
one of the most venerable of Caucasian traditions should seem to sug- 
gest some connection of the people which transmitted it, with the 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



35 



common Asiatic home of the bearded races. "Ask them," says 
Josselyn, " whither they go when they dye, they will tell you point- 
ing with their finger to Heaven beyond the white mountains, and do 
hint at Noah's Floud, as may be conceived by a story they have 
received from Father to Son, time out of mind, that a great while 
agon their Countrey was drowned, and all the People and other 
Creatures in it, only one Poivaiv and his Webb foreseeing the Floud 
fled to the white mountains carrying a hare along with them and so 
escaped ; after a while the How aw sent the Hare away, who not 
returning emboldened thereby they descended, and lived many years 
after, and had many Children, from whom the Countrie was filled 
again with Indians."* The English name of our mountains, which 
had its origin, perhaps, while as yet they were only known to adven- 
turous mariners, following the still silent coasts of New England, 
relates them to all other high mountains, from Dhawala^-Giri, the 
White Mountain of the Himmalayah, to Craig JEryri or Snowdon of 
Wales ; but it is interesting to find them also, in this legend, in some 
sort of mythical connection with traditions and heights of the ancient 
continent, the first knowledge of which carries us back to the very 
beginnings of human history. 

Josselyn spent fifteen months in New England, at his first visit, in 
1638, and eight years at his second, in 1663 ; but there is no reason 
to suppose that he visited the mountains till the latter period, f which 
was twenty years after the journeys of which Winthrop's History has 
preserved a record. It is to Darby Field of Pascataquack that the 
credit is now generally assigned of being the first explorer of the 
White Mountains. Accompanied by two Indians, Winthrop tells us, 
Field climbed the highest summit in 1642. It appears from the 
account that " within 12 miles of the top was neither tree nor grass 
but low savins, which they went upon the top of sometimes, but a 

* Josselyn' s Voyages, p. 135. " The Indians gave them the name of Agiocochoolc." 
Belknap, N. H. iii. p. 31. There are one or two other, so called, Indian names. 

f Mr. Savage, in a note to Winthrop, correcting Belknap's misstatement, takes this 
new, which appears to have all the evidence in its favor. 



36 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



continual ascent upon rocks, on a ridge between two valleys filled 
with snow, out of which came two branches of Saco River, which met 
at the foot of the hill where was an Indian town of some 200 people. 
.... By the way, among the rocks, there were two ponds, one a 
blackish water, and the other a reddish. The top of all was plain 
about 60 feet square. On the north side was such a precipice, as 
they could scarce discern to the bottom. They had neither cloud 
nor wind on the top, and moderate heat."* This appears to have 
been in June, and " about a month after he went again with five or 
six in his company,"! and " the report he brought of shining stones, 
&c, caused clivers others to travel thither but they found nothing 
worth their pains." J 

Of these others are particularly mentioned Thomas Gorges, Esq., 
and Mr. Vines, two magistrates of the province of Sir Ferdinando 
Gorges, who went " about the end " of August, of the same year. 
" They went up Saco River in birch canoes ... to Pegwaggett, 
an Indian town. From the Indian town they went up hill (for the 
most part) about 30 miles in woody lands, then they went about 7 
or 8 miles upon shattered rocks, without tree or grass, very steep all 
the way. At the top is a plain about 3 or 4 miles over, all shat- 
tered stones, and upon that is another rock or spire, about a mile in 
height, and about an acre of ground at the top. At the top of the 
plain arise four great rivers, each of them so much water, at the first 
issue, as would drive a mill, Connecticut River from two heads, at the 
N. W. and S. W., which join in one about 60 miles off, Saco River 
on the S. E., Amascoggin which runs into Casco Bay at the N. E., 
and Kennebeck, at the N. by E. The mountain runs E. and W. 
thirty miles, but the peak is above all the rest." § There can be but 
little doubt that Field, entering the valley, it is likely of Ellis River, 
left it for the great southeastern ridge of Mount Washington, the 
same which has since been called Boott's Spur. This was the " ridge 

* Winthrop, N. E., by Savage, ii. p. 67. t Ibid. \ Ibid. p. 89. 

§ Ibid. p. 89. Hubbard's account (Hist. N. E. p. 381) is made up from both of Win- 
throp' s. 



THE FOUR Y ALLEYS. 



37 



between two valleys filled with snow, out of which came two branches 
of Saco River," and it led him, as probably the other party also, to 
the broadest spread of that great plain, of which the southeastern 
grassy expanse, of some forty acres, has long been known as Big- 
elow's Lawn, and the " top," to the north, where the two ponds are, 
furnished Gorges with a part, no doubt, of the sources of his rivers. 
The writer sought to trace this early way in 1843, leaving the road, 
in Jackson, at about four miles distance from the Elkins farm-house 
in Pinkham woods, and striking directly up Boott's Spur to the sum- 
mit ; and was surprised, after struggling through the region of dwarf 
firs, and surmounting a considerable space of the bald region, with 
the first view of the peak of Mount Washington, as a pretty regu- 
lar pyramid, in what appeared a plain (which is just the way it 
struck Gorges, and also Josselyn), that had ever occurred to him. 
Davis's bridle-path, opened in 1845, traverses the bald part of the 
same ridge, and afforded the same view, while it was in use. But 
the other early account, that of Josselyn, indicates possibly another 
way of ascent, as inviting, perhaps, to a new comer to the mountains, 
as it is difficult, and even dangerous. " Fourscore miles," says Jos- 
selyn " (upon a direct line) to the Northwest of Scarhoroiv, a Ridge 
of Mountains run Northwest and Northeast an hundred leagues, 
known by the name of the White Mountains, upon which lieth Snow 
all the year, and is a Land-mark twenty miles off at Sea. It is ris- 
ing ground from the Sea shore to these Hills, and they are inacces- 
sible but by the Gullies which the dissolved Snow hath made ; in 
these Gullies grow Saven bushes, which being taken hold of are a 
good help to the climbing discoverer ; upon the top of the highest of 
these Mountains is a large Level or Plain of a days journey over, 
whereon nothing grows but Moss ; at the farther end of this Plain is 
another Hill called the Sugar-loaf, to outward appearance a rude 
heap of massie stones piled one upon another, and you may as you 
ascend step from one stone to another, as if you were going up a 
pair of stairs, but winding still about the Hill till you come to the 
top, which will require half a days time, and yet it is not above a 

8 



38 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Mile, where there is also a Level of about an Acre of ground, with a 
pond of clear water in the midst of it ; which you may hear ruD 
down, but how it ascends is a mystery. From this rocky Hill you 
may see the whole Country round about ; it is far above the lower 
Clouds, and from hence we beheld a Yapour (like a great Pillar) 
drawn up by the Sun Beams out of a great Lake or Pond into the 
Air, where it was formed into a Cloud. The Country beyond these 
Hills Northward is daunting terrible, being full .of rocky Hills, as 
thick as Mole-hills in a Meadow, and cloathed with infinite thick 
Woods."* There are several points in which this narrative of Jos- 
selyn's surpasses both the others already given, and perhaps it might 
have been expected to. We miss indeed an account of the author's 
journey from the coast, and of the way in which the wilderness 
struck him, but perhaps this is in some good part made up to us by 
a passage of his Voyages, where, after describing " the countrie 
within" as "rockie and mountainous, full of tall wood," he says, 
" one stately mountain there is surmounting all the rest, about four 
score mile from the sea," and then goes on as follows : " Between 
the mountains are many ample rich and pregnant valleys as ever eye 
beheld, beset on each side with variety of goodly trees, the grass 
man-high unmowed, uneaten, and uselessly withering ; " and " within 
these valleys . . . spacious lakes or ponds well stored with fish and 
beavers ; the original of all the great rivers in the countrie," f which, 
add only the black flies, " so numerous up in the country that a man 
cannot draw his breath but he will suck of them in," J really gives a 
rather striking sketch of what he must have seen and encountered. 
In the Voyages, Josselyn corrects what he says of the snow's lying 
the whole year upon the mountains, by excepting the month of Au- 
gust, § and after remarking that " some suppose that the White 
Mountains were first raised by earthquakes," he adds that " they 
are hollow, as may be guessed by the resounding of the rain upon the 
level on the top. 11 || The pond on the top, in this account, may have 



* Rarities of New England, p. 3. f Jossetyn's Voyages, p. 43. 

$ Ibid. p. 121. § Ibid. p. 55. || Ibid. p. 58. 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



39 



been due to extraordinary transient causes ; it is not mentioned by 
the other visitors of the seventeenth century, and has not been heard 
of since. There is nothing else to be noticed but what was suggested 
at the beginning, that the author's remark about the mountains being 
" inaccessible except by the gullies," seems to point to an ascent, in 
this case, by one of the eastern gulfs or ravines. 

We next hear of an ascent of the White Mountains by " a ranging 
company," which " ascended the highest mountain, on the N. W. 
part," so far, as appears, the first ascent on that side, April 29, 1725, 
and found, as was to be expected, the snow deep, and the alpine 
ponds frozen.* Another ranging party, which was " in the neighbor- 
hood of the White Mountains, on a warm day in the month of March," 
in the year 1746, had an interesting and the first recorded expe- 
rience of a force, which has left innumerable proofs of its efficiency 
all through the mountains. It seems that this party was " alarmed 
with a repeated noise, which they supposed to be the firing of guns. 
On further search, they found it to be caused by rocks, falling from 
the south side of a steep mountain. "f 

The Western Pass of the mountains may have been known to the 
Indians, but it was not turned to account by the English till after 
1771, when two hunters, Timothy Nash and Benjamin Sawyer,' — the 
former said by Messrs. Farmer and Moore to have made the discov- 
ery, but the latter certainly admitted to a share in its benefits, and 
himself not yet forgotten in the hills, — passed through it. A road was 
soon after opened by the proprietors of lauds in the upper Cohos, and 
another, through the Eastern Pass, was commenced in 1774.J Set- 
tlers began now to make their way into the immediate neighborhood 
of the mountains. The townships of Jefferson, Shelburne which 
included Gorham, and Adams now Jackson, successively received 
inhabitants from 1773 to 1779, and the wilderness, if as yet far 
enough- from blossoming, was opened, and to some extent tamed. 

It was now that the first company of scientific inquirers approached 
the White Hills. In July, 1784, the Rev. Manasseh Cutler of Ips- 

* Belknap, N. H. iii. p. 35. f p. 27. J Ibid. iii. p. 36. 



40 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



wich, a zealous member of the American Academy of Arts and Sci- 
ences, the Rev. Daniel Little of Kennebunk, also a member of the 
Academy, and Colonel John Whipple of Dartmouth, afterwards 
called Jefferson, the most prominent inhabitant of the Cohos coun- 
try, visited the mountains, " with a view to make particular observa- 
tions on the several phenomena that might occur. It happened unfor- 
tunately that thick clouds covered the mountains almost the whole 
time, so that some of the instruments, which, with much labor, they 
had carried up, were rendered useless." Others were broken. They 
made some unsatisfactory barometrical observations, from a compu- 
tation of which, the elevation of the principal summit above the sea 
was reckoned at ten thousand feet ; but were disappointed in an 
attempt at a geometrical admeasurement from the base.* It is likely 
that the plants of the higher regions were observed, and Mr. Cakes 
possessed fragments of such a collection made, either now or later, by 
Dr. Cutler ; but the latter did not notice them in his memoir on the 
plants of New England published the next year in the transactions of 
the Academy, nor is there any mention of them in the six small vol- 
umes of his botanical manuscripts which have come to my knowledge. 
Belknap has preserved a single passage from a manuscript of Dr. 
Cutler's, which, in the absence of anything else, has possibly interest 
enough in this place to be quoted. " There is evidently the appear- 
ance of three zones — 1, the woods — 2, the bald mossy part — 3, the 
part above vegetation. The same appearance has been observed on 
the Alps, and all other high mountains. I recollect no grass on the 
plain. The spaces between the rocks in the second zone, and on the 
plain, are filled with spruce and fir, which, perhaps, have been grow- 
ing ever since the creation, and yet many of them have not attained 
a greater height than three or four inches, but their spreading tops 
are so thick and strong, as to support the weight of a man, without 
yielding in the smallest degree. The snows and winds keeping the 
surface even with the general surface of the rocks. In many places, 
on the sides, we could get glades of this growth, some rods in extent, 

* Belknap, N. H. iii. p. 37. 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



41 



when we could, by sitting down on our feet, slide the whole length. 
The tops of the growth of wood were so thick and firm, as to bear us 
currently, a considerable distance, before we arrived at the utmost 
boundaries, which were almost as well defined as the water on the 
shore of a pond. The tops of the wood had the appearance of having 
been shorn off, exhibiting a smooth surface, from their upper limits, 
to a great distance dowm the mountain."* 

The way by which Cutler ascended the mountain is indicated by 
the stream which bears his name in Belknap's and Bigelow's narra- 
tives, and was doubtless very much that taken and described by the 
last-mentioned explorer. " In less than half a mile, southward from 
this fountain " of Ellis River, at the height of land between the Saco 
and the Androscoggin, in Pinkham woods, " a large stream, which 
runs down the highest of the White Mountains, falls into Ellis River, 
and in about the same distance from this, another falls from the same 
mountain ; the former of these streams is Cutler's River, the latter 
New River." f Cutler's River was still known to the inhabitants of 
the solitary house in these woods, in 1840, when the writer followed 
its course, on his way to the upper region of the mountains ; and the 
name, he was then told, by persons long resident in the place, and 
acquainted with the later explorations of Bigelow and others, was 
given to it at Dr. Cutler's express desire. $ It ought to be handed 
down. 

President Dwight passed through the Notch in 1797, and again in 
1803, and has left in his Travels a description of the scenery which 
is still valuable for its particularity and appreciativeness, and an 
interesting account of the first settlers of Nash and Sawyer's, and 
Hart's Locations. It appears from this that Eleazar Rosebrook 
planted himself in the former tract, where he was succeeded many 
years after by the late well-known Ethan Allen Crawford, in 1788. 
Abel Crawford, who married Rosebrook's daughter, and whom very 
many remember as the worthy Patriarch of the mountains, began his 

* Cutler MS. in Belknap, iii. p. 34. f Belknap, N. H. iii. p. 44. 

t MS. notebook, 10th Aug. 1840. 



42 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



clearing thirteen miles below Rosebrook's, in Hart's Location, a few 
years later ; and one Davies, at about the same time,* in the tract at 
the end of the Notch valley, afterwards occupied by Willey.f And 
this writer has also preserved a note of some importance on one of 
the great fires which have devastated the mountains of the Notch. 
" When we entered upon this farm," says he, speaking of Davies's, 
just mentioned, " in 1803, a fire which not long before had been kin- 
dled in its skirts, had spread over an extensive region of the moun- 
tains on the Northeast ; and consumed all the vegetation, and most 
of the soil, which was chiefly vegetable mould, in its progress. The 
whole tract, from the base to the summit, was alternately white and 
dappled ; while the melancholy remains of half-burnt trees, which 
hung here and there on the sides of the immense steeps, finished the 
picture of barrenness and death." $ Old Mr. Crawford used to 
speak (in 1845 or 6) of the great fire which reduced Mount Craw- 
ford to its present condition, as having occurred some thirty years 
before. The time may well arrive when careful records of these 
irreparable mischiefs, which destroy in their progress the very vital- 
ity of our mountains, and leave nothing but crumbling rocks, the 
shelter of a strange and spurious vegetation, — nothing but the ruins 
of nature, — shall possess a mournful value. 

In July, 1804, Dr. Cutler visited the mountains a second time, 
in company with Dr. W. D. Peck, afterwards Professor of Natural 
History at Cambridge. Barometrical observations obtained on this 
occasion, and computed by Mr. Bowditch, gave an elevation to the 
highest summit of 7055 feet above the sea. § A collection of the 
alpine plants was made by Dr. Peck, and was afterwards seen by 
Mr. Pursh, whose citations, in his Flora of North America, printed 
in 1814, enable us to determine the earliest recognition of several of 
the most interesting species. 

* Both were there at the time of Dr. Dwight's visit in 1797, and had come in since 
Rosebrook's clearing was begun. E. A. Crawford says it was " soon after " 1792, that his 
father commenced in Hart's Location. (Hist, of White Mountains, p. 19.) 

f Dwight's Travels, ii. p. 143. 

X Ibid. p. 152. 

§ Mem. Amer. Acad. iii. p. 326. 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



43 



In 1812 a general account of the White Mountains was published 
by Dr. Belknap, in the last volume of his history of New Hampshire. 
This was made up in part of communications from Dr. Cutler, but 
contains also interesting original information, which has been already 
referred to. There does not appear to be any reason to suppose that 
the historian himself penetrated the wild parts of the mountains, but 
the name of Mount Washington was first published in his work. 

Up to this time no thorough survey of the Natural History of the 
Mountains had been carried out. We have seen the beginnings of 
an acquaintance with the plants. And Mr. Maclure, and George 
Gibbs, Esq., had each made more than one visit to different parts of 
the region, with a view to the examination of its geology and its min- 
erals. But Dr. Bigelow's " Account of the White Mountains of New 
Hampshire," published in 1816, from explorations made during the 
same season, determined in great measure the phgenogamous botany 
of our Alps, while it furnished also a statement of all that was known 
of their mineralogy and zoology. Dr. Francis Boott, Mr. Francis C. 
Gray, and the venerable Chief Justice Shaw, were members of tins 
party, which accomplished, from barometrical observations, perhaps 
the most satisfactory determination of the height of Mount Washing- 
ton that has been made ; assigning to it an altitude above the sea of 
6225 feet. Dr. Boott returned to the mountains in the next month, 
(August,) and added a " considerable " number of species to the 
botanical collection. Dr. Bigelow entered the mountains be the 
Eastern Pass, and followed Cutler's River, making the passage of 
the dwarf firs by a way opened a few years before by direction 
of Col. Gibbs.* The knowledge of these journeys has now disap- 
peared from the neighborhood, with the early inhabitants. But in 
1840, all was still remembered, from Cutler's time, down, at the 
solitary house of D. Elkins, in the Pinkham woods ; and I found it 
easy, in the company of the late Harrison Crawford, an honest man, 
and one who knew thoroughly his native hills, to trace again the old 
way of ascent. In 1819, Abel Crawford opened the footway to 

* Account, &c, in New Eng. Journal of Med. and Surg. Nov. 1816. 



44 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Mount Washington which follows the southwestern ridge from Mount 
Clinton ; and three years later Ethan Allen Crawford, who had suc- 
ceeded to his grandfather Rosebrook's farm in Nash and Sawyer's 
Location, opened his new road along the course of the Ammonoosuck* 
These two became now the common ways of ascending the moun- 
tains, and the wilderness of the Eastern Pass was rarely disturbed. 
Botanists were gainers by this change, at least those whose researches 
were carried on without camping out. The southwestern ridge and 
Mount Washington together afford a better view of the whole vege- 
tation than is obtainable by the eastern paths ; and two points on this 
ridge, — the Lake of the Clouds, and especially the ravine called 
Oakes's Gulf, between Mount Washington and Mount Monroe, are 
peculiarly rich in rare plants ; the latter possessing indeed almost 
all the alpine plants of the mountains, and two (the Eyebright and 
the Rhinanthus) which are found nowhere else ; and Ethan Craw- 
ford's road by the Ammonoosuck, passed, as it struck up the peak of 
Mount Washington, close by the hanging gardens of the Great Gulf. 

In 1820, Messrs. A. N. Brackett and J. W. Weeks of Lancaster, 
with Ethan Crawford as guide, ascended the southwestern ridge by 
the new path, from the head of the Notch, and explored the summits 
of the whole range as far as Mount Washington ; estimating the 
heights of the seven highest points by means of a spirit level, and 
giving the names to these points which they have since borne. f The 
interesting account of this visit may be found in the New Hampshire 
Historical Collections for 1823. The path over Mount Clinton had 
been advertised, and that following the Ammonoosuck had attracted 
still more attention from its appearing to promise facilities for a car- 
riage road of some seven miles toward Mount Washington, and visit- 

* E. A. Crawford's Hist, of the White Mountains, pp. 42, 49. 

f Some doubt having been entertained within a few years, as to which is Mount Adams 
and which Mount Jefferson, and an error in the use of these names having even found its 
way into the first edition of Mr. Bond's map, — it was corrected in the second, — it seems 
proper to copy the definite language of Messrs. Brackett and Weeks, who gave the names. 
" Mount Adams is known by its sharp terminating peak, and being the second N. of 
Washington," and "Jefferson is situated between these two." And the writer heard Col 
Brackett say that this was just as his party understood it. 



THE FOUR VALLEYS. 



45 



ors, aiming mostly at the ascent of the summit, began more frequently 
to find their way to the inns of the west side. But the inner soli- 
tudes of the mountains were very seldom entered. Now and then a ' 
naturalist, or a lover of woods and hills, penetrated the forest, or 
climbed the dark steeps ; or an angler (not a man with a " fishpole " 
hooking trout, but a hearty admirer of nature and her clear brooks, 
who catches his dinner for his soul's health as well as his body's) fol- 
lowed the streams ; but rare enough it was that such hills and 
streams could tempt to more than a brief day's delay, with all their 
visible glories and balsamic airs. 

Many alpine plants, and it is what adds manifestly to their interest, 
are confined to very small areas.* And the most promising botan- 
ical regions, in mountains of the height and general character, and in 
the degree of latitude of ours, are the secluded and difficult banks of 
alpine rivulets which descend the steep slopes of the hidden south- 
eastern ravines, and the little hanging gardens, sometimes all but 
inaccessible, which these runnels form, on favoring shelves of rock. 
Thus it was not to be expected that any single survey of the botany 
of the higher region of the mountains, however careful, should do 
more than give the general features of vegetation, with such part 
only of the special and exceptional ones as the good luck of the occa- 
sion might bring into view. A considerable number of peculiarly 
interesting species has been added to the flora of the White Moun- 
tains since Bigelow first delineated their botanical geography, and 
there is little doubt that more remain to be found. 

Benjamin D. Greene, Esq., collected the plants of the southwestern 
ridge in 1823, and Mr. Henry Little, a student of medicine, explored 
this part of the mountains the same year. In 1825, William Oakes, 
Esq., and Dr. Charles Pickering, made, together, extensive re- 
searches, adding some species, new to the flora, of much interest ; 
and the former returned, and continued his investigations, the folio w- 

* " Les aires fort restreintes sont plus nombreuses que les aires tres vastes. II y a 
beaucoup d'especes qui, par leur raret6, sont exposes a disparaitre de la scene du 
monde." A. De Candolle Geogr. Bot. I. p. 588. 

9 



46 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



ing year. Dr. J. W. Bobbins explored, with much care, the whole 
range, in 1829 ; descending into and crossing the Great Gulf, and 
traversing for the first time, at least so far as scientific interests were 
concerned, all the eastern summits ; — and also made important addi- 
tions to the flora of the mountains ; while before this, the practised 
eye of Mr. Nuttall had detected several species, of such rarity, that 
few have seen them since. 

But the longest of these were short visits, too short for a loving 
acquaintance with the mountains, or a satisfying experience of their 
wealth of wholesome enjoyment. S. A. Bemis, Esq., was perhaps 
the earliest to delay longer, and return oftener, — to make a home for 
the time of the White Hills ; and certainly the sunny valley of Mount 
Crawford, and its cheerful views, and the then sufficient neighboring 
streams, might well attract an admirer of nature ; nor has the attrac- 
tion yielded yet, after more than thirty years ; or the example failed 
to win others to the same untiring pleasures. 

The writer of these pages first visited the White Mountains in 
1837. It was then a secluded district, the inns offering only the 
homely cheer of country fare, and the paths to Mount Washington 
rarely trodden by any who did not prize the very way, rough as it 
might be, too much to wish for easier ones. But it was not long 
before the Crawfords turned foot-paths into bridle-paths, and in 1840, 
a party, — it included Dr. Charles T. Jackson, then occupied in the 
Geological Survey of New Hampshire, who delayed long enough at 
the mountains to ascertain some altitudes, — reached Mount Wash- 
ington on horseback by the way from the Notch. This introduced 
all the changes that have followed, and the various appliances of 
luxury which now meet the visitor to the White Hills. 

Note.— From the Life of Dr. Belknap (N. Y. 1847, p. 102,) it appears that both he, and 
Dr. Fisher of Beverly, were of the party which visited the mountains in 1784, though nei» 
ther of them succeeded in reaching the summit. " Dr. Fisher," we are furtfTer told, 
' was left behind at the Notch, to collect birds, and other animal and vegetable produc- 
tions." There were seven persons in all in the party, which, we can well believe, " was 
the subject of much speculation," as it passed through Eaton and Conway. 



/ 



LAKE WINNIPISEOGEE. 



" In those Happy spots of nature where land ana water, above and below, combine their 
charms, it is hard to tell whether the stony upland height, or the liquid deep beneath, most lures 
the sight. I believe it was Goethe who first said that lakes are the eyes of the landscape; ana 
if there be reason for such a figure, it is not strange such features in the countenance of the 
world should fix our regard. Certainly they add to that countenance the same sort of bright- 
ness and animation which the organs of vision give to the human face ; and as our glance, 
oerusing the living traits of a man, is never satisfied till it reaches his eye, so on the earth, we 
seek after water, and are not quite content till our attention, long vagrant, rests upon it." 



SUMMER BY THE LAKE-SIDE. 
NOON. 

White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep 
Light mists, whose soft embraces keep 
The sunshine on the hills asleep! 

0, isles of calm! — 0, dark, still wood! 
And stiller skies that overbrood 
Your rest with deeper quietude ! 

0, shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through 
Yon mountain gaps, my longing view 
Beyond the purple and the blue, 

To stiller sea and greener land, 

And softer lights and airs more bland, 

And skies — the hollow of God's hand! 

Transfused through you, mountain friends: 
With mine your solemn spirit blends, 
And life no more hath separate ends. 

I read each misty mountain sign, 
I know the voice of wave and pine, 
And I am yours, and ye are mine. 

Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, 

I lapse into the glad release 

Of Nature's own exceeding peace. 

0, welcome calm of heart and mind! 
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind 
To leave a tenderer growth behind, 



50 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



So fall the weary years away; 
A child again, my head I lay 
Upon the lap of this sweet day. 

This western wind hath Lethean powers, 
Yon noon-day cloud Nepenthe showers, 
The lake is white with lotus-flowers! 



LAKE WINNIPISEOGEE. 

Does this word mean " The Smile of the Great Spirit," or " Pleas- 
ant Water in a High Place ? " There has been a dispute, we 
believe, among the learned in Indian lore, as to the true rendering. 
Whatever the word means, the lake itself signifies both. Topograph- 
ically, under the surveyor's eye and the mill-owners' estimates, it is 
pleasant water in a high place ; about thirty miles long, and varying 
from one to seven miles in breadth ; . with railroad stations on its 
shores at Alton Bay and Weir's ; and a little more than a hundred 
miles distant from Boston. To the poet whose exquisite verses we 
have chosen as a prelude to this chapter, and to all who have an eye 
anointed like his, it is the smile of the Great Spirit. 

It is easy to give a general description of the character of the 
shores of Winnipiseogee, to count its islands, and to enumerate the 
mountain ranges and peaks, with their names and height, that sur- 
round it. But it is not so easy to convey any impression, by words, 
of the peculiar loveliness that invests it, and which lifts it above the 
rank of a prosaic reservoir in Belknap and Carrol counties in New 
Hampshire, about five hundred feet above the sea, into an expression 
of the Divine art renewed every summer by the Creator. There is 
very little cultivation around the borders of Winnipiseogee. The 
surroundings are scarcely less wild than they were, when, in 1652, 
Captains Edward Johnson and Simon Willard carved their initials, 
which are still visible, on the " Endicott Rock," near its outlet. 



LAKE WINNIPISEOGEE. 51 

The straggling parties of Indians who pass by it now, on their way 
to trade with the visitors at the Flume House in Franconia, see it 
but little more civilized in expression than their forefathers did, whose 
wigwams, before Massachusetts felt the white man's foot, spotted the 
meadows of the Merrimac below. 

Where the old smoked in silence their pipes, and the young 
To the pike and the white perch their baited lines flung; 
Where the boy shaped his arrows, and where the shy maid 
Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum braid. 

And yet it is not a sense of seclusion amid the forests, of being shut 
in by untamed hills amid the heart of the wilderness, that Winni- 
piseogee inspires. Indeed, the lake is not shut in by any abrupt 
mountain walls. Its islands and shores fringe the water with winding 
lines and long, low, narrow capes of green. But the mountains retreat 
gradually back from them, with large spaces of cheerful light, or 
vistas of more gently sloping land, between. The whole impression 
is not of wild, but of cheerful and symmetrical beauty. 

Artists generally, we believe, find better studies on Lake George. 
It may be that there is more of manageable picturesqueness in the 
combination of its coves and cliffs ; but we think that, for larger pro- 
portioned landscape — to be enjoyed by the eye, if it cannot be easily 
handled by the pencil or brush — Winnipiseogee is immeasurably 
superior. We cannot imagine a person tiring, through a whole sum- 
mer, of its artistic and infinite variety. While it could hardly be that 
the eye, in the daily and familiar acquaintance of a whole season 
with Lake George, would not feel the need of wider reaches in the 
mountain views, richer combinations of the forest wildness with re- 
treating slopes and cones bathed in " the tenderest purple of dis- 
tance," and with glimpses, now and then, such as the New Hampshire 
lake furnishes, of sovereign summits that heave upon the horizon their 
vague, firm films. 

Mr. Everett said, a few years since, in a speech, that Switzerland 
has no lovelier view for the tourist than the lake we are speaking of 
affords. And Rev. Mr. Bartol, of Boston, in his charming volume, 



52 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



" Pictures of Europe," tells us : " There may be lakes in Tyrol and 
Switzerland, which, in particular respects, exceed the charms of any 
in the Western world. But in that wedding of the land with the 
water, in which one is perpetually approaching and retreating from 
the other, and each transforms itself into a thousand figures for an 
endless dance of grace and beauty, till a countless multitude of 
shapes are arranged into perfect ease and freedom, of almost musical 
motion, nothing can be beheld to surpass, if to match, our Winni- 
piseogee." It is, of course, in moving over the lake, on a steamer 
or in a boat, that this " musical motion " of the shores is c aught. 

We will abide the judgment of any tourist as to the extravagance 
of this quotation, if he has an eye competent to look through the land 
to landscape, and becomes acquainted with the lake from the deck of 
a steamer, on an auspicious summer day. The sky is clear ; there 
are just clouds enough to relieve the soft blue and fleck the sentinel 
hills with shadow ; and over the wide panorama of distant mountains, 
a warm, dreamy haze settles, tinging them, as Emerson says the 
south wind, in May-days, 

Tints the human countenance 
With a color of romance. 

Perhaps there is at first a faint breeze, just enough to fret the water, 
and roughen or mezzotint the reflections of the shores. But as we 
shoot out into the breadth of the lake, and take in the wide scene, 
there is no ripple on its bosom. The little islands float over liquid 
silver, and glide by each other silently, as in the movements of a 
dance, while our boat changes her heading. And all around, the 
mountains, swelling softly, or cutting the sky with jagged lines of 
steely blue, vie with the molten mirror at our feet for the privilege 
of holding the eye. The " sun-sparks " blaze thick as stars upon the 
glassy wrinkles of the water. Leaning over the side of the steamer, 
gazing at the exquisite curves of the water just outside the foamy 
splash of the wheels, watching the countless threads of silver that 
stream out from the shadow of the wheel-house, seeing the steady 



LAKE WIXXIPISEOGEE. 



53 



iris float with us to adorn our flying spray, and then looking up to 
the broken sides of the Ossipee mountains that are rooted in the lake, 
over which huge shadows loiter ; or back to the twin Belknap hills, 
that appeal to softer sensibilities with their verdured symmetry ; or, 




further down, upon the charming succession of mounds that hem the 
shores near Wolfboro' ; or northward, where distant Chocorua lifts 
his bleached head, so tenderly touched now with gray and gold, to 
defy the hottest sunlight, as he has defied for ages the lightning and 
storm ; — does it not seem as though the passage of the Psalms is 
fulfilled before our eyes, — " Out of the perfection of beauty God 
hath shinecl ? " 

The lines of the Sandwich Mountains, on the northwest, of which 

the lonely Chocorua, who seems to have pushed his fellows away from 

10 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



him, is the most northerly summit, are the most striking features of 
the borders of the lake. An American artist who had lived many 
years in Italy, on a recent visit to this country, went to Winnipiseo- 
gee with the writer of these pages. He was greatly impressed and 
charmed with the outlines of this range, which is seen at once from 
the boat as she leaves Weir's landing. He had not supposed that 
any water view in New England was bordered with such a mountain 
frame. And before the steamer had shot out from the bay upon the 
bosom of the lake, he had transferred to his sketch-book its long 
combination of domes and heavy scrolls and solid walls, all leading 
to a pyramid that supports a peak desolate and sheer. 

The most striking picture, perhaps, to be seen on the lake, is a 
view which is given of the Sandwich range in going from Weir's to 
Centre Harbor, as the steamer shoots across a little bay, after pass- 
ing Bear Island, about four miles from the latter village. The whole 
chain is seen several miles away, as you look up the bay, between 
Red Hill on the left, and the Ossipee mountains on the right. If 
there is no wind, and if there are shadows enough from clouds to 
spot the range, the beauty will seem weird and unsubstantial, — as 
though it might fade away the next minute. The weight seems to 
be taken out of the mountains. We might almost say 

They are but sailing foam-bells 

Along Thought's causing stream, 
And take their shape and sun-color 

From him that sends the dream. 

Only they do not sail, they repose. The quiet of the water and the 
sleep of the hills seem to have the quality of still ecstasy. It is only 
inland water that can suggest and inspire such rest. The sea itself, 
though it can be clear, is never calm, in the sense that a mountain 
lake can be calm. The sea seems only to pause ; the mountain lake 
to sleep and to dream. 

But there is one view which, though far less lovely, is more excit- 
ing to one who has been a frequent visitor of the mountains. It is 
where Mount Washington is visible from a portion of the steamer's 



LAKE WINMPISEOGEE. 



55 



track, for some fifteen or twenty minutes. Passing by the westerly 
declivity of the Ossipee ridge, looking across a low slope of the Sand- 
wich range and far back of them, a dazzling white spot perhaps — if 
it is very early in the summer — gleams on the northern horizon. 
Gradually it mounts and mounts, and then runs down again as sud- 
denly, making us wonder, possibly, what it can be. A minute or 
two more, and the unmistakable majesty of Washington is revealed. 
There he rises, forty miles away, towering from a plateau built for 
his throne, dim green in the distance, except the dome that is 
crowned with winter, and the strange figures that are scrawled 
around his waist in snow. 

Why should all the nearer splendors affect an old visitor of the 
hills less than that spectacle ? Why should Whiteface, which seems, 
at a careless glance, much higher by its nearness, or the haughty 
Chocorua, move less joyous emotions than that tinted etching on the 
northern sky ? Why will not a cloud thrice as lofty and distinct in 
its outline, suggest such power and waken such enthusiasm ? Is 
there a physical cause for it ? Is it that the volcanic power ex- 
pended in upheaving one of the supreme summits, 

when with inward fires and pain 
It rose a bubble from the plain, 

is permanently funded there, and is suggested to the mind whenever 
we see even the outlines in the distant air, — thus making it repre- 
sent more vitality and force than any pile of thunderous vapor can ? 
Or is it explained by the law of association, — because we know, in 
looking at those faint forms, that their crests have no rivals in our 
northern latitude this side the Rocky Mountains, — that the pencilled 
shadows of their foreground are the deepest gorges which landslides 
have channelled and torrents have worn in New England, — and that 
from their crown a wider area is measured by the eye, than can be 
seen this side the Mississippi ? 

How admirably and tenderly Mr. Ruskin has touched this point in 

a passage, which our readers will thank us that we quote for them, 

10* 



56 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



from the third volume of " The Modern Painters : " " Examine the 
nature of your own emotion (if you feel it) at the sight of an Alp, 
and you find all the brightness of that emotion hanging, like dew on 
gossamer, on a curious web of subtle fancy and imperfect knowledge. 
First, you have a vague idea of its size, coupled with wxmder at the 
work of the great Builder of its walls and foundations ; then an appre- 
hension of its eternity, a pathetic sense of its perpetualness, and your 
own transientness, as of the grass upon its sides ; then, and in this 
very sadness, a sense of strange companionship with past generations 
in seeing what they saw. They did not see the clouds that are float- 
ing over your head ; nor the cottage wall on the other side of the 
field ; nor the road by which you are travelling. But they saw that. 
The wall of granite in the heavens was the same to them as to you. 
They have ceased to look upon it ; you will soon cease to look also, 
and the granite wall will be for others. Then, mingled with these 
more solemn imaginations, come the understandings of the gifts and 
glories of the Alps, the fancying forth of all the fountains that well 
from its rocky walls, and strong rivers that are born out of its ice, 
and of all the pleasant valleys that wind between its cliffs, and all the 
chalets that gleam among its clouds, and happy farmsteads couched 
upon its pastures ; while together with the thoughts of these rise 
strange sympathies with all the unknown of human life and happiness, 
and death, signified by that narrow white flame of the everlasting 
snow, seen so far in the morning sky. 

These images, and far more than these, lie at the root of the emo- 
tion which you feel at the sight of the Alp. You may not trace 
them in your heart, for there is a great deal more in your heart, of 
evil and good, than you ever can trace ; but they stir you and 
quicken you for all that. Assuredly, so far as you feel more at be- 
holding the snowy mountain than any other object of the same sweet 
silvery gray, these are the kind of images which cause you to do so ; 
and, observe, these are nothing more than a greater apprehension of 
the facts of the thing. We call the power 6 Imagination,' because it 
imagines or conceives ; but it is only noble imagination if it imagines 
or conceives the truth." 



LAKE WINMPISEOGEE. 



57 



And from the hint of these last words, let us have a little talk with 
our readers concerning enthusiasm in seeing such scenery as the 
Lake furnishes in charming days. Sometimes, people go into New ' 
Hampshire with such apathetic eyes, that they have no relish for 
richness of landscape, or for mountain grandeur. There is no smack 
in their seeing. And there are others, who, if they are not disap- 
pointed in the outlines, the heights, and the colors that are shown to 
them, still think it vulgar to show enthusiasm. Any glee, or clap- 
ping of the hands, or hot superlative, is almost as heinous to them as 
a violation of the moral law. Just as some women think health vul- 
gar, and cultivate languor, there are persons who repress real feeling, 
and assume the blase mood as a matter of gentility or manners. 

The foundation of this feeling it is not easy to understand. A 
visit to Lake Winnipiseogee, a journey to the mountains, if we have 
been hemmed within city walls, or chained to a prosaic landscape, 
most of the year, ought to be made a vacation season, a jubilee for 
the eye, which was formed for free range of the splendors which the 
Creator has scattered over space. The eye is the chief physical 
sign of the royalty of man on the globe. Our hands stretch but a 
few feet from our bodies ; hearing reaches comparatively but a little 
way ; but the sense of sight relates us consciously to the unbounded. 
The beast has no perception of the breadth and depth of space. His 
eye is a definite faculty, bound to bodily service, like a finger, a 
wing, or a claw. But think of the reaches of distance through which 
the eye of man is able to soar ; think of the delicate tintings it can 
distinguish and enjoy ; think of the sublime breadth and roofing it 
supplies to our apparently insignificant existence, — reaching as it 
does to the Pleiades and the Milky Way and the cloud-light in the 
belt of Orion ! 

To learn to see is one of the chief objects of education and life. 
First as infants we learn to push the world off from ourselves, and to 
disentangle ourselves as personalities from a mesh of sensations. 
Then we gain power to detect and measure distance ; then to per- 
ceive forms and colors ; and at last to relate objects quickly and 



58 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



properly to each other by a sweep of the eye. And this process is 
crowned by the poetic perception of general beauty, in which our 
humanity flowers out, and by which we obtain possession of the 
world. " The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indu- 
bitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this 
field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of, 
them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which 
no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the 
poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their 
warranty-deeds give no title." The general beauty of the world is a 
perpetual revelation, and if we are impervious to its appeal and 
charm, a large district of our nature is curtained off from the Cre- 
ator, " and wisdom at one entrance quite shut out." 

As soon, therefore, as we become educated to see, and just in 
proportion to our skill in seeing, we get joy. The surprise to the 
senses in first looking upon a noble landscape, ought to show itself 
in childlike animation. The truly cultivated perception is chiefly 
conditioned by the recovery of the innocence of the eye. Forms and 
colors look as fresh to the truly trained intellect, as they do to the 
uncritical sense of the little child that chases its golden-winged but- 
terfly without any competence to measure the horizon, or any feeling 
that it is pursuing its fluttering enticement unroofed in immensity. 
Mr. Ruskin tells us, in his work on the Elements of Drawing, that 
every highly accomplished artist has reduced himself, in dealing with 
the colors of a landscape, as nearly as possible to the condition of 
infantine sight. So that perpetual surprise and enthusiasm are signs 
of healthy and tutored taste. 

And let us not forget that the charm which the person discerns 
who feels rapture amid such scenes as Winnipiseogee offers, is not 
illusive. It is founded on fact. The man who sees the most beauty 
in that landscape, deals with the facts as demonstrably as if he were 
engaged all day in dipping buckets of water from its treasury, or 
shovelling sand and felling birches on its shores. Agassiz finds mar- 
vel enough for a month's study, and for unbounded admiration, in a 



LAKE WINNIPISEOGEE. 



59 



single grasshopper from a field on one of its islands. Jackson sees 
quarries of truth in the direction and dip of the mountain chains that 
border the Lake, where a common eye detects nothing but blank 
bareness of ledge, or a slope of ordinary forest at a certain angle. 
Mantell might unfold from a pebble stone at the foot of Ossipee the 
history of the globe for a hundred thousand years. And just as 
these men deal with facts more thoroughly than the purblind vision 
which overlooks these wonders, so the artistic eye deals more faith- 
fully with facts, and with more facts, too, when it delights in the 
beautiful curves and windings and fringes of the lakes, islands, and 
shores, enjoys the shape into which the substance of Chocorua is 
sculptured, and finds the breezy or the sleeping water of the Lake, a 
fountain-head of joy for a tired mind and a wilted frame. A man 
that is insensible to beauty, is blind to facts. Goethe tells us that 
he once had a present of a basket of fruit, and was in such raptures 
at the sight of the loveliness of form and hue which it presented, that 
he could not persuade himself " to pluck off a single berry or to 
remove a single peach or fig." Were not the bloom and the symme- 
try as truly facts, as the weight and juices of the products which the 
basket held ? If half a dozen pictures could be seen in an Art gal- 
lery of New York or Boston, with perspective as accurate, with tints 
as tender, with hues as vivid and modest, with reflections as cun- 
ningly caught, with mountain-slopes as delicately pencilled, as the 
Lake exhibits in reality, fifty times in the summer weeks, what pride 
there would be in the artistic ability in the country, and what inter 
est and joy in seeing such masterpieces from mortal hands ! A great 
many, no doubt, would be willing to spend profusely, to own one or 
two such pictures, colored on less than a dozen square feet of canvas, 
who do not estimate very highly the privilege of looking upon the 
real water-colors of the Creator, of which every triumph of a human 
artist is only an illusion. 

Great eloquence we cannot get except from human genius. There 
is nothing in external nature that supplies its place. The music of a 
symphony by an orchestra is an achievement that cannot be dimmed 



60 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



by a comparison with any melodies and harmonies of air and woods 
and sea. Statuary may be perfect, and is not compensated by the 
ordinary aspects of human life. Architecture is a creation of the 
human intellect, adding to the stores of beauty in the world. But 
pictorial landscape is exceptional among the arts in this, that it is an 
inadequate transcript of what God is creating every day. A cultured 
and reverent eye can have for nothing the originals, freshly laid on the 
canvas of matter, in a beauty that cannot be adequately translated. 

And then think what it cost to arrange a landscape which we can 
see from the little steamer, as she rides from Weir's to Centre Har- 
bor ! Think of the mad upheavals of boiling rock, to cool and harden 
in the air ; think of the centuries of channelling by torrents and frost 
to give their nervous edge to distant ridges and crests ; think what 
patient opulence of creative power wrapped their sides with thickets, 
that grow out of the mould of pre-adamite moss and fern, and spotted 
their walls with weather stains in which the tempests of ten thousand 
years ago took part. Consider, too, the exquisite balancing of widely 
sundered forces, represented in the clouds that sail over that Sand- 
wich chain and cool their cones with shadow, or in the mists that 
sometimes creep up their slopes and twine around their brows, or in 
the streams, those grandchildren of the ocean, that revel in their 
ravines. Bear in mind what delicate skill is exhibited in the mix- 
ture of the air through whose translucent sea we catch their mottled 
charm, and how the huge earth spins on its axis without noise or jar 
to give the ever shifting hues that bathe them from golden dawn to 
purple evening. And now, when we remember that all this is only 
the commencement of an enumeration of the forces that combine in 
producing a landscape, is a little visible exultation anything more 
than an honest expression of the privilege a mortal is endowed with, 
in being introduced to the Creator's art ? 

Let us remember that pure delight in natural scenes themselves, 
is the crown of all artistic power or appreciation. And when a man 
loses enthusiasm, — when there is no surprise in the gush of evening 
pomp out of the west, — when the miracle of beauty has become 



LAKE WINNIP1SE0GEE. 



61 



commonplace, — when the world has become withered and soggy to 
his eye, so that, instead of finding its countenance " fresh as on cre- 
ation's clay," he looks at each lovely object and scene, and, like the 
travelling Englishman, oppressed with ennui, finds " nothing in it," 
— it is about time for him to be transplanted to some other planet. 
Why not to the moon ? No Winnipiseogee is there. There are 
mountains enough, but they show no azure and no gold. There are 
pits enough, but there is no water in them ; no clouds hover over 
them ; no air and moisture diffuses and varies the light. It is a 
planet of bare facts, without the frescos and garniture of beauty, a 
mere skeleton globe, and so perhaps is the Botany Bay for spirits 
that have become torpid and blase. 

The points of rest on the borders of the lake are, as we have 
already stated, Centre Harbor and Wolfboro'. Steamers ply to and 
from these points, from the railroad stations at Alton Bay and Weir's, 
several times in the day. Thus, when the weather is pleasant, per- 
sons may pass the larger part of the day on the lake, and may take 
their meals on the boat if they choose. From Wolfboro' there are 
many pleasant drives in which the lake is brought into the landscape. 
Copple Crown mountain, not difficult of ascent, and about five miles 
from the hotel, furnishes one of the best general views of the lake, 
and shows, besides the hills in which it is set, some thirty other 
sheets of water, large and small, that enliven the outskirts of the 
great mountain district in New Hampshire and Maine. . 

The steamer stays over night at Wolfboro', and not unfrequently 
an excursion is made to see the lake by moonlight. What can be 
more charming than, at the close of one of the long days of June, to 
see the full moon rise over the lower end of the lake just before the 
sun goes down ? When the evening is fair and the water still, the 
glimmer of its brassy disk, just clearing the narrow belt of haze be- 
hind the mountains, may be seen in the long mellow wake that seems 
to sound the depths of the roseate or pale blue water, while the day 
vet glows along the gray hill slopes, and is brightening the young 
11 



62 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



green of the tree-tops with touches of gold. Then when the sunlight 
is withdrawn, and the evening zephyrs have folded their wings, what 
delight to see the moon brighten, to notice how the mountains grad 
ually flatten as the color is drained from them, to watch the islands 
with their marshalled rows of tall pines seem to stir as we pass them, 
as the light shimmers upon the water around their dark forms, and 
soon to see the lengthened image of the moon become a straight up- 
right column of gold hanging in the sapphire deep ! 

Do not say, oh reader, that it is " all moonshine " if we assure 
you that there is a great difference in moonlight. No place better 
for testing it than Wolfboro'. Science has analyzed the sun-rays, 
and has shown that the proportions of their elements vary in the four 
seasons, according to the changing necessities of vegetation. A 
spirit delicate enough for lunar photography, no doubt, could tell the 
month of the year by the quality of its moonlight, and be able also to 
individualize each evening of its dispensation, from the gentle radi- 
ance of what a child calls the baby moon to the ample flood of its 
maturity. Make half a dozen excursions on the lake at night, and 
see if, with different winds and temperatures, you find the moonlight 
twice alike. Notice how sometimes it is thin, bluish, and chilly, as 
if it had been skimmed in the upper ether before reaching our air. 
Sometimes you find it deathly white. Bogles and spectres seem to 
pervade it. It appears to be the ghost of sunshine, shed upon the 
earth from a dead world. Again you will find it pouring a weird hue 
and influence, suggesting fairies and frolicsome fays. It is the ele- 
ment then of Ariels and Peasblossoms, the woof of inexhaustible Mid- 
summer Night's Dreams. Then as we pass the slope of one of the 
cultivated islands in the lake, 

The velvet grass seems carpet meet 
For the light fairies' lively feet; 
Yon tufted knoll with daisies strewn 
Might make proud Oberon a throne, 
While, hidden in the thicket nigh, 
Puck should brood o'er his frolic sly; 
And where profuse the wood-vetch clings 
Round ash and elm in verdant rings, 



LAKE W1NNIPISE0GEE. 



G3 



Its pale and azure-pencilled flower 
Should canopy Titania's bower 

But what a rare joy when, in some warm summer evening, we can sail 
on the lake while the moon is full in a double sense, and seems to 
pour out in larger liberality than usual from its fountains ! Its 
beams do not rain in silver streams, but gush, as it were, from all the 
veins of the air. Every globule of the atmosphere exudes unctuous 
light. And its color is so charming — a delicate luminous cream ! 
One can hardly help believing that Gunstock and Ossipee enjoy their 
anointing, after the withering heat of the day, with such cool and 
tender lustre. And how still the lake lies, to have its surface bur- 
nished by it into liquid acres of a faint golden splendor ! 

From Centre Harbor, at the upper end of the Lake, the drives 
are very attractive. The guide-books report them in detail. We 
have room to call attention only to the excursion which is most inter- 
esting, that is, to the summit of " Red Hill," which rises about five 
miles away, and stands about two thousand feet above the sea. Near 
the top of the mountain, where its ledges of sienite are exposed to 
the action of the air, they have a reddish hue. But it owes its name, 
we believe, to the fact that it is covered with the uva ursa, the leaves 
of which change to a brilliant red in autumn. The excursion is 
easily made in the afternoon, or between breakfast and dinner. Its 
unwooded peak is lifted to the height from which scenery looks most 
charming. And there is no point except this, along the regular 
mountain route, beneath which a large lake is spread. But here 
Winnipiseogee stretches from its very foot, and its whole length is 
seen as far as the softly swelling hills that bound it on the southeast. 
There is only one point from which the view of it is more attractive, 
— that is from the highest of the Belknap mountains, which stand, 
not at one end of the lake like Red Hill, but midway of its length. 
Mount Belknap is visited from Laconia, and very few have seen from 
its summit the lovely mirror in which its own feminine form, and its 
smaller sister hill, are repeated. But whoever misses the view from 



64 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Red Hill, loses the most fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable view, 
from a moderate mountain height, that can be gained from any emi- 
nence that lies near the tourist's path. The Mount Washington 
range is not visible, being barred from sight by the dark Sandwich 




chain, which in the afternoon, untouched by the light, wears a savage 
frown that contrasts most effectively with the placid beauty of the 
Lake below. Here is the place to study its borders, to admire the fleet 
of islands that ride at anchor on its bosom — from little shallops to 
grand three-deckers — and to enjoy the exquisite lines by which its 
bays are enfolded, in which its coves retreat, and with which its low 
capes cut the azure water, and hang over it an emerald fringe. And 



LAKE WINNIPISEOGEE. 



65 



if one can stay there late in the afternoon, as we have stayed, and see 
the shadows thrown out from the island and trees, and the hues that 
flush the Lake's surface as the sun declines, he will be prepared to 
enjoy more thoroughly the description of such an hour and such a 
view, with which Percival has enriched American literature. 

Thou wert calm, 
Even as an infant calm, that gentle evening; 
And one could hardly dream thou'dst ever met 
And wrestled with the storm. A breath of air, 
Felt only in its coolness, from the west 
Stole over thee, and stirred thy golden mirror 
Into long waves, that only showed themselves 
In ripples on thy shore, — far distant ripples, 
Breaking the silence with their quiet kisses 
And softly murmuring peace. 

Far to the south 
Thy slumbering waters floated, one long sheet 
Of burnished gold, — between thy nearer shores 
Softly embraced, and melting distantly 
Into a yellow haze, embosomed low 
'Mid shadowy hills and misty mountains, all 
Covered with showery light, as with a veil 
Of airy gauze. Beautiful were thy shores, 
And manifold their outlines, here up-swelling 
In bossy green, — there hung in slaty cliffs, 
Black as if hewn from jet, and overtopped 
With the dark cedar's tufts, or new- leaved birch, 
Bright as the wave below. How glassy clear 
The far expanse! Beneath it all the sky 
Swelled downward, and its fleecy clouds were gay 
With all their rainbow fringes, and the trees 
And cliffs and grassy knolls were all repeated 
Along the uncertain shores, — so clearly seen 
Beneath the invisible transparency, 
That land and water mingled, and the one 
Seemed melting in the other. 0, how soft 
Yon mountain's heavenly blue, and all o'erlaid 
With a pale tint of roses! Deep between 
The ever-narrowing lake, just faintly marked 
By its reflected light, and further on 
Buried in vapory foam, as if a surf 
Heaved on its utmost shore. How deep the silence! 
Only the rustling boughs, the broken ripple, 
The cricket and the tree-frog, with the tinkle 



66 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Of bells in fold and pasture, or a voice 
Heard from a distant farm, or hollow bay 
Of home-returning hound, — a virgin land 
Just rescued from the wilderness, still showing 
Wrecks of the giant forest 



I gazed upon them, 
And on the unchanging lake, and felt awhile 
Unutterable joy, — I loved my land 
With more than filial love, — it was a joy 
That only spake in tears. 

But the beauty of the lake cannot be judged from a point so high 
as Red Hill. Its varied charms are not to be seen from one spot on 
its shore like Centre Harbor. They must be sought along all its 
intricate borders, among its three hundred or more islands, and in 
boats upon its own bosom. This is the way to find the most delight- 
ful single pictures. This is the way to study at leisure landscapes 
which the swift steamer allows you to see but a moment. This is the 
way to find delicious " bits," such as artists love for studies, of jut- 
ting rock, shaded beach, coy and curving nook, or limpid water 
prattling upon amethystine sand. At one point, perhaps, a group of 
graceful trees on one side, a grassy or tangled shore in front, and a 
rocky cape curving in from the other side, compose an effective fore- 
ground to a quiet bay with finely varied borders, and the double- 
peaked Belknap in the distance. Or what more charming than to 
sail slowly along and see the numerous islands and irregular shores 
change their positions and weave their singular combinations ? Now 
they range themselves on either hand, and hem a vista that ex- 
tends to the blue base of Copple Crown. Now an island slides its 
gray or purple form across, and, like a rood-screen, divides the long 
watery aisle into nave and choir, followed by another and another, 
till the perspective is confused and the vista disappears. Then in 
the distance, islands and shores will marshal themselves in long 
straight lines, fronting you as regular as the phalanxes of an army ; 
and if the sun is low present the embattled effect the more forcibly, 
with their vertically shadowed sides and brightly lighted tops. Or 




at another spot, through an opening among dark headlands, the sum- 
mit of Chocorua is seen moving swiftly over lower ranges, and soon 



68 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



the whole mountain sweeps into view, startling you with its ghost- 
like pallor, and haggard crest. On a morning when the fog is clear- 
ing, is the time to be tempted towards the middle of the lake, to see 
the islands, whose green looks more exquisite then than in any other 
atmosphere, stretch away in perspectives dreamy and illusive. Two 
or three miles of distance seem five times as long, when measured 
through such genial, moist, and silvery air. And now, if we will bend 
westward, between curving shores that will grant us ample passage, 
we shall be glad to find ourselves in the encircled bay near Weir's, 
and can have leisure to enjoy in silence the gentle slopes of the Bel- 
knaps, and the succession of mounds that heave away from them to 
the southeast, while the fog is rolling up into clouds, and the sunshine 
slipping down a broad cultivated field on one of the swelling cones, 
burnishes it to emerald. And towards evening we may glide down 
the narrow inlet around which Centre Harbor is built, and follow the 
shadows, while 

Slow up the slopes of Ossipee 
They chase the lessening light. 

When they have dislodged it all, we can watch, as we return to the 
village, the " Procession of the Pines," which rise on the south- 
western ridge that hems the cove, and be tempted to fancy, as they 
darken, while the saffron horizon is dying into ashy gray sky, that 
each of those grotesque and weird forms holds the soul of some grim 
old Sachem. 

If the shores of the Lake were lined with summer-houses, how 
might the charms of boating upon Winnipiseogee enrich our litera 
ture ! Our readers of course know what " The Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table " says of the privilege and pleasure of boating. 
" Here you are afloat with a body a rod and a half long, with arms, 
or wings, as you may choose to call them, stretching more than 
twenty feet from tip to tip ; every volition of yours extending as 
perfectly into them as if your spinal cord ran down the centre strip 
of your boat, and the nerves of your arms tingled as far as the broad 



LAKE WINNIPISEOGEE. 



69 



blades of jour oars. This, in sober earnest, is the nearest approach 

to flying that man has ever made, or perhaps ever will make 

I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite delights, that 
intoxicate me on some sweet June morning, when the river and bay 
are smooth as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping it 
up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after me like 
those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the seam still shin- 
ing for many a long rood behind me." 

Ah, if " The Autocrat " would visit Winnipiseogee for a season, 
and cleave its glossy azure with his canoe, and tell us how mountain 
peaks and lake rhyme themselves in his imagination, — or what fancies 
visit him when he pauses at some rare scene, and the silver has 
dripped from his resting oar-blades, and the wrinkled curves from his 
prow have smoothed into calm, and headland, mountain chain, eme- 
rald fringes of an island shore, and the snowy islands of the over- 
brooding blue are repeated beneath him in the sleeping silver ! 
Would that the creeks and armlets of our inland bay, with all their 
settings, might be reflected thus in " The Atlantic ! " Shall we 
never have our " lake-poets " to celebrate for us the surroundings of 
Winnipiseogee, as the Cumberland lakes have been interpreted by 
Wordsworth and his friends ? Here is a passage in which Words- 
worth describes his rowing over Windermere with a companion : — 

Soon as the reedy marge 
Was cleared, I dipped, with arms accordant, oars 
Free from obstruction; and the boat advanced 
Through crystal water, smoothly as a hawk, 
That, disentangled from the shady boughs 
Of some thick wood, her place of covert, cleaves 
With correspondent wings the abyss of air. 
— " Observe," the Vicar said, " yon rocky isle 
With birch-trees fringed; my hand shall guide the helm 
While thitherward we shape our course; or while 
We seek that other, on the western shore, 
Where the bare columns of those lofty firs, 
Supporting gracefully a massy dome 
Of sombre foliage, seem to imitate 
A Grecian temple rising from the Deep." 
" Turn where we may," said I, " we cannot err 



70 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



In this delicious region." Cultured slopes, 

Wild tracts of forest ground, and scattered groves, 

And mountains bare, or clothed with ancient woods, 

Surrounded us; and, as we held our way 

Along the level of the glassy flood, 

They ceased not to surround us; change of place, 

Producing change of beauty ever new. 

Ah! that such beauty, varying in the light 

Of living nature, cannot be portrayed 

By words, nor by the pencil's silent skill; 

But is the property of him alone 

Who hath beheld it, noted it with care, 

And in his mind recorded it with love! 

Why is it that the reflections in a still river or lake as we float 
over it, or wander bj its shores, are so much more charming than 
the actual scenes ? The shallowest still water, it has been happily 
said, is unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, 
there is more than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy running 
aground. Has the reader ever looked at a landscape by bending his 
head low, thus turning his eyes upside down, and noticed how much 
richer are the colors, how much sublimer the sky, how much more 
vast and impressive the revelation of space ? So the landscape 
turned upside down in the mirror of a lake is unspeakably more 
bewitching. The mountains that point to the nadir are more fasci- 
nating than those that soar to the zenith. The vines and grasses 
that fringe the unsubstantial coasts below have a sweeter grace than 
those which can be plucked. Is it not Coleridge who compares with 
this the superior fascination we find in a character, or in a natural 
scene, when reported from the imagination of a great poet, than when 
we see the elements of it in the real world ? 

We shall not find this exquisite under world, this bottomless deep 
of ideal beauty, described with strokes more vivid and airy than 
in the following passage from Rev. Mr. Bartol's " Pictures of Eu- 
rope," in which he portrays a lake of the Tyrol which no map has 
ever reported. " Into the pellucid water glides our little boat. As 
I gazed, I felt almost unsafe, suspended at some dizzy height ; for it 
was as if only the thinnest, finest layer of gossamer fabric were 



LAKE WINOTPISEOGEE. 



71 



stretched there for a horizontal veil or floor, and on both sides, the 
unfathomable abyss. On smoothly darts our secure vessel. I look 
over her side into the infinite chasm. What keeps her from falling 
down ? On what mysterious support does she ride between these 
rival skies ? How, through this hollow sphere, holds she her level 
way ? Is she a fairy bark, and are we spirits transported now tow- 
ards some sphere of the blessed ? From this mood I was diverted a 
little, and my mind saved from losing itself in pure ecstasy, by 
observing the huge forms of the inverted hills, running downward as 
far as upward, in their erectness, they climbed. What refinement 
of pleasure was there in remarking the minuteness, as well as vast- 
ness of the copy ! Ah ! no copyist of the old masters can render 
his original upon the canvas as faithfully in every fine and hue, or 
with expression so perfect and speaking, as it pleases God here to 
translate his own works in the engravings of this marvellous page. 
He, too, writes his name in water ; and, if it fades with the ruffling 
wind, it fades but to return again with spell more sweetly binding 
than if it had not vanished at all. How we admired the submarine 
curving fines, the diverse shades, — each angle flashing back the 
light, each vapor-shrouded point jutting from the mighty mass, — the 
shreds of woolly cloud floating underneath, and the winds blowing gen- 
tly round the spectral mountain's brow as truly as about the other 
mountain on high ! How the double glory divided our regard, till 
we drew towards the shore from which we were to roll on wheels 
again by a road hedged in on one side by verdant woods, and on the 
other by amber streams, that, with their clear, delicious color, told us 
whence the lake derived its crystal character to make it like 8 one 
entire and perfect chrysolite ! ' " 

But it is time that we should say something of the charms of color 
which a long visit by the lake shore will reveal. Many persons sup- 
pose that they have seen Winnipiseogee in passing over it in the 
steamer on their way to Conway and " The Notch." Seen the 
lake ! Which lake ? There are a thousand. It is a chameleon. 



72 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



It is not a steady sapphire set in green, but an opal. Under no two 
skies or winds is it the same. It is gray, it is blue, it is olive, it is 
azure, it is purple, at the will of the breezes, the clouds, the hours. 
Sail over it on some afternoon when the sky is leaden with northeast 
mists, and you can see the simple beauty of form in which its shores 
and guards are sculptured. This is the permanent lake which pro- 
saic geology has filled and feeds. And this was placed there to dis- 
play the riches of color in which the infiniteness of the Creator's art 
is revealed to us more than in the scale of space. 

We have said that the lake is an opal. If persons with artistic 
delight in color should keep a journal of what would be shown to 
them during a few weeks, they would be surprised at the octaves that 
are touched in the course of a short season, and at the suddenness of 
their transitions. People should learn to notice the changes and 
combination and range of colors, not merely for the joy that is given 
at the moment through definite perception, but also for the education 
of taste in the appreciation and enjoyment of art. How can a per- 
son, that has not observed minutely and faithfully the hues and har- 
monies of a landscape at different times of day, and under widely 
different conditions of air and cloud and light, intelligently compre- 
hend and judge the products and the genius of the masters of land- 
scape, as displayed in our art rooms ? The effect of White Mountain 
journeys should be seen in our homes, in a purer delight in art, and 
an intelligent patronage of it. And it is only close observance of the 
ever changing expressions which flit over the face of Nature, that en- 
lightens taste, and makes it competent for this. It has been well said 
that a connoisseur who has scampered over all Europe, and who most 
likely cannot tell the shape of the leaf of an elm, will be voluble of 
criticism on every painted landscape from Dresden to Madrid, and 
pretend to decide whether they are like Nature or not. And thus 
many a person may pronounce upon the tone of a ]3icture, that it is 
not natural, who has no conception of the scale and freaks of color 
winch a fortnight reveals among the mountains and by Winnipiseogee. 



LAKE WINNIPISEOGEE. 



73 



If the lake were to be painted as it may sometimes be seen in the 
forenoon of a day when clouds are flying over the sun, the water should 
be dyed the intensest blue, with a single horizontal line of white 
towards the farthest shore. But if the painter is to report it as it 
appears a few moments after, when the sun emerges from the clouds, 
he must make a picture in which there is no deep blue, nor any defi- 
nite color, but one broad field of glittering and tremulous brightness. 
Another picture would show the azure surface deepened to indigo, 
and its usually dark islands rising out light upon the darkness around 
them. Under a drapery of drowsy clouds, when the shores cut 
harshly the gray water that is ruffled by the lazy wind, the canvas 
can glow with no splendors, but will suggest chiefly the throbbing 
sound of the wavelets that crumble upon the clean beaches 

In tender curving lines of creamy spray. 

A view taken in smoky weather will show the lake with its delicate 
web of cross ripples as a beautiful lace pattern, miles in extent, tinted 
pale blue, cream white, and rosy gray. Or as the charming Proteus 
appears on some clear, calm evening, the artist that copies it must 
stripe the canvas with different colored zones of varying widths, some 
opaque, others transparent, according as they reflect the glowing 
tints of the lower, or the cooler lights of the upper sky. 

And now and then a thunder-shower, in an afternoon when the 
sunlight gently shimmers over its breadth, comes to try its resources 
in color effects. It sweeps low across it with slaty wings, and blots 
out the islands and blackens the water with its rough breath and 
angry shade. Watch now, after the gusts of rain are spent, the 
inky darkness of the upper end of the lake. But the islands farther 
away, just coming into the returning light out of the cloud-fringe, 
show a white lustre as of new-fallen snow. And when the wrath of 
the tempest has retreated towards the sea, one can have the privi- 
lege, from the hills of Centre Harbor, of seeing a rainbow span the 
lake, succeeded, perhaps, by a sunset in which the whole surface of 



74 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



the water, responding to the hues above, outvies the rainbow with 
gorgeous flames. 

A more sensitive eye will not fail to notice the variety of sunset 
effects by which Winnipiseogee is glorified. The great wreaths of 
gray and white cumuli, which sailed slowly around the skies' verge 
during the day, will sometimes melt into the uprising mists of even- 
ing, and belt the horizon with a delicate zone of violet and gray. 
What an exquisite veil is this for the shadowed parts of the hills 
around the southerly shores of the lake, and what a fascinating con- 
trast to the fine pencillings of pale reddish hues on their sunward 
outlines ! Another evening, the hills are not obscured thus. They 
stretch a long chain of azure and purple under the southern sky, 
which is filled over and back of them with masses of irregular, flaky ; 
low clouds of orange, violet, and gray, that float before rich fields of 
creamy cirrus. These hues run an octave higher than those on the 
mountains below, and the sunbeams vivify them still more here and 
there with yellow curves and jagged lines of scarlet. 

The abruptness and height of the hill to the northwest renders 
Centre Harbor comparatively unfavorable for seeing sunsets. Yet 
we now and then see a display there which the elevated and dark 
horizon seems to heighten rather than to mar. But let me quote 
here a passage from a letter of an artist friend, in which he describes 
a sunset that he once saw early in July during a visit to Centre Har- 
bor. " The day had been cloudy, with scattered showers, and the 
effects, broad and massive, about the setting sun, were unspeakably 
rich in form and color. The tumultuous mingling of broad folds of 
half-exhausted rain clouds and rolling piles of cumuli near the sun, 
with their deep, though transparent colors, their wild dashes of gor- 
geous tertiaries, and jagged breaks of flaming orange and crinkling 
gold, showed me from what studies Rubens colored the 4 Judgment 
of Paris ' and the ' Plague of the Fiery Serpents.' The most beau- 
tiful feature of the evening's display came a little later, when the sun 
was down, and had withdrawn his fire from a large mass of the lower 



LAKE WINNIPISEOGEE. 



75 



clouds, which now being purified, gathered into one towering form of 
priestly vapor, unsullied white, rising high above the murkiness and 
splendid impurity around into the tender golden blue of the upper 
sky. The most notable peculiarity about it, however, was the seem- 
ingly perfect whiteness of the great mass in shade, while the narrow 
edging of sunshine appeared white again in flame." 

But we must not pass from a treatment of the color around Lake 
Winnipiseogee without referring to the October splendors that begird 
it, when the hues of sunset are spread permanently upon the hills. 
During July and August, a gradual change is slowly going on, by 
which the colors of June are not so much altered as deepened and 
enriched. September is the transition period, from the styles or 
effects of color in the season's time of growth, to those belonging to 
the period of decline and decay. As yet the landscape has lost 
nothing of the fulness of its summer foliage. But richer tints grad- 
ually steal into the shadows and darker tones of the landscape, warm- 
ing the coolness, and breaking the monotony, with flashes of crimson 
and orange. More purple is shown in the distances of the lake, with 
richer browns and lighter olives and citrine upon the foregrounds. 
Nature seems to be carelessly running her hand over the notes, 
touching and indicating the great chords, before breaking into the 
full pomp of the autumn symphony. 

And as October comes near, the pale green of the plentiful birches 
mounts into yellow. Some of the maples have turned to scarlet, 
others orange, others a dull or pale red. The oaks and hardier trees 
show deep crimson stains running among their dark green masses. 
The grass-grounds or pastures are becoming yellow. The bared 
ledges and boulders, so quiet and shy in their light gray suits of 
summer, stand out conspicuous in blue and purple ; and the humble 
sumachs have advanced from their shadowed places, and are calling 
attention to their red and yellow plumes. On the borders of the 
little streams or pools in the meadows, the pink and purple clusters of 
the thoroughwort blossoms, the blue and white asters, and the epaulet 



76 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



flowers are in their prime ; a deep red mingles with the olive of tne 
ferns, and the sweetbrier is hung thick with scarlet berries. 

These colors mounting and growing richer in hue and mass give 
the tone to the landscape seen around Winnipiseogee in mid-October. 
Now indeed we may safely say that nothing in Europe can surpass 
it. The rose-tints on the snowy spires that shoot over the Konigsee ; 
the flushes " which morn and crimson evening paint," that dye the 
steep crests which soar above the cultivated slopes around Lucerne ; 
the dreamy air and flickering lights that enhance the beauty of the 
Italian shores under which Como sleeps, are more than mated in the 
gorgeousness and the softness amid which the New England lake is 
pavilioned now. Whoever has the privilege of sailing on Winni- 
piseogee during the heart of October may say, 

My soul to-day- 
Is far away, 

Sailing the Vesuvian Bay; 
My winged boat, 
A bird afloat, 

Swims round the purple peaks remote; — 

Bound purple peaks 

It sails and seeks 
Blue inlets and their crystal creeks, 

Where high rocks throw 

Through deeps below, 
A duplicated golden glow. 

I heed not, if 

My rippling skiff 
Floats swift or slow from cliff to cliff; — 

With dreamful eyes 

My spirit lies 
Under the walls of Paradise. 

Whence have these hues been distilled that surpass the richness of 
the Orient and the flames that are reflected in the Amazon ? Whence 
has overflowed upon the prosaic air of New England this luxurious 
sweetness through which the light transudes upon a pageant such as 
no poet has ascribed to the pastures and the hill-sides of Arcadia ? 



LAKE W1NMPISE0GEE. 



77 



How near to us are the fountains of miracle ! How close the proc- 
esses and magic of the Infinite art ! 

Onward and on, the eternal Pan, 

Who layeth the world's incessant plan, 

Halteth never in one shape, 

But forever doth escape 

Like wave or flame, into new forms. 



The world is the ring of his spells, 
And the play of his miracles. 

Besides the splendor and subtlety of the colors around Winni- 
piseogee in October, there is a continual changefulness in every part 
of the view, even the foregrounds ; and especially under the magic 
influence of the evening light, dolphin flushes seem to make the land- 
scape unsteady, and the scenes as we look at them undergo 

a sea change 
Into something rich and strange. 

A wooded cape or island, one moment blazing in bright yellow and 
green, orange and scarlet, is the next a mass of variegated gray and 
purple or faded green. The Ossipee range now displays over its 
extensive sides a lambent vesture of light purple and crimson, yellow, 
pale-green, and orange, softened and harmonized by a thin glazing 
of transparent azure ; but turn again and it sleeps calmly in a robe 
of the tenderest violet, and the nearer objects 

The woods erewhile armed in gold, 
Their banners bright with every martial hue, 
Now stand like some sad beaten hosts of old 
Withdrawn afar in time's remotest blue. 

By the October haze, one considerable defect in the general lake 
views, to an artistic eye, is remedied. The somewhat harsh, spotty, 
or scattering effect of the irregular breaking in of so many dark 
points of land upon the light water, is concealed or softened. 

How fuse and mix, with what unfelt degrees, 
Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms, 
Each into each, the hazy distances! 
13 



78 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



The softened season all the landscape charms; 

Those hills, my native village that embay, 

In waves of dreamier purple roll away, 
And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering farms. 

And the morning and evening effects now show more variety, as well 
as richness, than in the summer months. What added picturesque- 
ness is given to the reflections by the many and various colors around 
the shores ! And what joy to sail in the steamer when the evening 
sunlight pours upon the sides of Ossipee and Red Hill, falling here 
and there upon grassy slopes, running in golden streams to the water's 
edge, leaving broad spaces or stripes of deep emerald or purple shade 
between, over which some scattered maples and birches stand, kin- 
dled into torches of scarlet and yellow fire ! 

The birds with most splendid plumage are not attractive songsters. 
In the summer-time, the pleasure of morning and evening by the 
lake-side is enhanced by the songs of birds and the sounds of winds 
through the waving crops and the full strung harps of the woods. 
But now the appeal is to the eye, and the ear is unsolicited. It is 
the melodies of tint and the grand harmonies of color that appeal to 
us in the Autumn. There is seldom a breeze on the lake during the 
reign of the October haze. The tender whispers of the wind are 
hushed ; the pulses of robin music, the shrill but sweet soprano of 
the fife-bird, and the whippoorwills' soft concert, do not enrich the 
air. The cricket's monotonous chant, " the insect's drowsy hum," 
is all the accompaniment allowed to the gorgeous pageantry of 
October, the sunset of the year. 

It is a pity that tourists could not see the lake when it is thus 
enfolded in the pomp of purple and gold. But if we can learn to see 
it truly in its paler beauty of summer, we shall find ourselves drawn 
into sympathy with the charming poem written by Mr. Whittier as 
the antistrophe to the lines which introduce our description, entitled 



LAKE WIKNIPISEOGEE. 



SUMMER BY THE LAKE-SIDE. 

EVENING. 

Yon mountain's side is black with night, 
While, broad-orbed, o'er its gleaming crown 

The moon slow rounding into sight, 
On the hushed inland sea looks down. 

How start to light the clustering isles, 
Each silver-hemmed! How sharply show 

The shadows of their rocky piles, 
And tree-tops in the wave below! 

How far and strange the mountains seem, 
Dim-looming through the pale, still light! ■ 

The vague, vast grouping of a dream, 
They stretch into the solemn night. 

Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale, 
Hushed by that presence grand and grave, 

Are silent, save the cricket's wail, 
And low response of leaf and Avave. 

Fair scenes! whereto the Day and Night 
Make rival love, I leave ye soon, 

"What time before the eastern light 
The pale ghost of the setting moon 

Shall hide behind yon rocky spines, 
And the young archer, Morn, shall break 

His arrows on the mountain pines, 
And, golden-sandalled, walk the lake! 

Farewell! around this smiling bay 

Gay-hearted Health, and Life in bloom 

With lighter steps than mine, may stray 
In radiant summers yet to come. 

13ut none shall more regretful leave 
These waters and these hills than I; 

Or, distant, fonder dream how eve 
Or dawn is painting wave and sky; 
13* 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



How rising moons shine sad and mild 
On wooded isle and silvering bay; 

Or setting suns beyond the piled 
And purple mountains lead the day; 

Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy, 
Nor full pulsed manhood, lingering here, 

Shall add to life's abounding joy, 
. The charmed repose to suffering dear. 

Still waits kind Nature to impart 
Her choicest gifts to such as gain 

An entrance to her loving heart 

Through the sharp discipline of pain. 

Forever from the hand that takes 
One blessing from us others fall; 

And, soon or late, our Father makes 
His perfect recompense to all! 

Q, watched by Silence and the Night, 
And folded in the strong embrace 

Of the great mountains, with the light 
Of the sweet heavens upon thy face, 

Lake of the Northland! keep thy dower 
Of beauty still, and while above 

Thy solemn mountains speak of power,. 
Be thou the mirror of God's love. 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



PLYMOUTH, CAMPTON, AND FRANC ONI A. 



" We were thus entering the State of New Hampshire on the bosom oj the flood formed by 
the tribute of its innumerable valleys. The river teas the only key which could unlock its maze, 
presenting its h ills and valleys, its lakes and streams, in their natural order and position. The 
Merrimack, or Sturgeon River, is formed by the confluence of the Pemigewasset, which rises 
near the Notch of the White Mountains, and the Winnipiseogee, which drains the lake of the 
same nzme. At first it comes on murmuring to itself by the base of stately and retired moun- 
tains, through moist primitive woods whose juices it receives, where the bear still drinks it, and 
the cabins of settlers are far between, and there are few to cross its stream ; enjoying in soli- 
tude its cascades still unknown to fame ; by long ranges of mountains of Sandwich and of 
Squam, slumbering like tumuli of Titans, with the peaks of Moosehillock, the Haystack, ana 
Kiarsarge, reflected in its waters ; wkere the maple and the raspberry, those lovers of the hills, 
Aourish amid temperate dews ;— flowing long and full of meaning, but untranslatable as its 
name Pemigewasset, by many a pastured Pelion and Ossa, where unnamed muses haunt, — 
tended by Oreads, Dryads, Naiads, and receiving the tribute of many an untasted Hippocrene. 

Such water do the gods distil, 
And pour down every hill 

For their New England men, 
A draught of this wild nectar bring, 
And ni not taste the spring 

Of Helicon again. 

Falling all the way, and yet not discouraged by the lowest fall. By the law of its birth never 
to become stagnant, for it has come out of the clouds, and down the sides of precipices worn in 
the flood, through beaver-dams broke loose, not splitting but splicing and mending itself, until 
it found a breathing-place in this loio land. There is no danger now that the sun will steal it 
back to heaven again before it reach the sea, for it has a warrant even to recover its own dews 
into its bosom with interest at every ere." 

Thoreau. 



THE PEMIGEW ASSET VALLEY. 



One hour by steamer across Lake Winnipiseogee, and another 
hour by cars, will carry the traveller from Centre Harbor to Plym- 
outh, from which the stages start with passengers for the Franconia 
mountains, at the head of the valley of the Pemigewasset. The 
distance from Centre Harbor, directly across to Plymouth by the 
county road, is only twelve miles. If this road were less hilly, it 
would offer one of the most delightful drives among the mountains. 
Although but twelve miles long, its measure, by the artist's estimate, 
must take into account the water-views that spot it so brilliantly. 
During a large portion of the drive the two lakes, — Great Squam, 
singularly striped with long, narrow, crinkling islands, and, like 
Wordsworth's river, winding in the landscape " at its own sweet 
will," — and Little Squam, unbroken by islands, fringed and shadowed 
by thickets of the richest foliage, that is disposed around its western 
shore, in a long sweeping curve line which will be remembered as a 
delightful melody of the eye, — offer themselves in various aspects that 
often compel us to stop and quietly drink in their beauty. No won- 
der that the Indians were so strongly attached to this neighborhood, 
and fought so desperately before yielding the possession of it to the 
white intruders. The lower hills tempted them with abundance of 
game, and the calm water supplied them with unfailing stores of 
fish ; while Winnipiseogee was but six miles distant one way, and 
the Pemigewasset equally near on the west. And possibly the sur- 
passing loveliness of the landscape served as a golden thread in the 
cord that bound them to this peaceful dell in the centre of New Eng- 
land. The larger Squam Lake, not a fourth part so large as Winni- 



84 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



piseogee, is doubtless the most beautiful of all the small sheets of 
water in New England ; and it has been pronounced by one gen- 
tleman, no less careful in his words than cultivated in his taste, 
more charmingly embosomed in the landscape than any lake of equal 
size he had ever seen in Europe or America. 




The wnoie Sandwich range is in view behind the lower hills that 
guard the lake. The most striking picture is gamed about five miles 
from Centre Harbor, from the top of a hill- on the road, where, as we 
look over the broadest portion of the lake, and across several parallel 
bars of narrow islands, the whole form of gallant Chocorua, with his 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 85 

steel-hooded head, fills the background to the northward, towering, 
without any intervening obstruction, twelve or fifteen miles away. We 
give an illustration of this view. But we can call attention in words 
only to a dark and massive mountain that stands also in the land- 
scape, wearing a hue as of beaten metals and adamant. From what- 
ever point it is observed near Centre Harbor, it is distinguished by 
its darker color from the main Sandwich range, back of which it 
looms. And from Squam Lake it shows scattered points, and short, 
jagged lines of glittering lights, (probably bare points of quartz,) 
which make its darkness sparkle as though it were sheathed in a coat 
of mail. 

There are charming reliefs of forest-path in the road, which, though 
uneven, is of quite civilized smoothness. And it opens at last upon 
a splendid surprise in the rich meadows of Holderness and Plymouth, 
that are studded or overlooked by tasteful country residences, and 
adorned with clusters and avenues of grand old elms. Holderness, 
which lies opposite Plymouth on the eastern bank of the Pemigewas- 
set, was founded by a company of English emigrants ardently devoted 
to the creed and worship of the Church of England, and with glowing 
anticipations of the future for the colony. The founders hoped and 
believed that they were laying the basis of the great city of New 
England, the rival of Puritan Boston, and destined to throw it in the 
shade. The head-quarters of heresy, they allowed, would have some 
commercial advantages, on account of its nearness to the ocean and 
its excellent harbor ; but, in population, refinement, dignity, and 
wealth, they supposed that Holderness was to be the chief city of the 
New England colonies. What a strange answer to their dream, that 
even the pretension with which the settlement was made is not noticed 
by history, and has scarcely wandered from the proprietors' records 
into any tradition ! 

Plymouth is one of the villages to which a day or two, at least, 
should be devoted on the way to the mountains. Many visitors will 
be glad to learn that the old building remains here in which Daniel 

14 



86 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Webster made his first argument before a court. It is now used as 
a wheelwright's shop. The statesman wrote his name in large letters 
with red chalk, a short time before his death, upon a wall of the room 
which vibrated to his first legal effort ; but the autograph, the most 
valuable one probably to be found in New England, has since been 
covered by a daub from a paint brush. In scenery, Plymouth is 
remarkable for the beauty of its meadows, through which the Pemi- 
gewasset winds, and for the grace of its elm-trees. Even the hurry- 
ing and careless visitor will have his attention arrested here and there 




by a faultless one, standing out alone over its private area of shadow, 
seemingly an ever-gushing fountain of graceful verdure. 

There are several moderate hills in the village from which delight- 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



87 



fol views of the river amply repay the small trouble it requires to 
gain them. And Prospect Mountain, or North Hill, which is its true 
name, commands a panorama so extensive and charming that an 
ascent of it should be accounted one of the great privileges of this 
route to the mountains. The surveyors tell us that it stands higher 
over the village than Red Hill over Centre Harbor ; yet there is a 
very good wagon road to the summit. The landscape, if less lovely 
in one or two respects than that from Red Hill, has more variety, and 
includes more pastoral beauty. The whole extent of Wmnipiseogee 
in its broadest part is visible, and the arms and creeks, which stretch 
out from its body like claws and antennae, seem to be separate water 
gems scattered upon the landscape. The view of it, however, as a 
whole, is not nearly so fine as from Red Hill, where the carvings and 
adorning of its curiously scalloped shores are seen. Directly beneath 
us are the two Squam lakes. And the track of the Pemigewasset, 
here and there receiving a tributary stream through beautifully 
guarded passes on the west, may be followed along widening 
meadows, from the distant slopes that give birth to it, to the broader 
and lordly current below, where it joins its cold tide with the warmer 
stream that flows from Winnipiseogee, and takes the name of Merri- 
mack. 

I felt the cool breath of the North, 

Between me and the sun, 
O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth, 

I saw the cloud-shades run. 
Before me, stretched for glistening miles, 

Lay mountain-girdled Squam ; 
Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles 

Upon its bosom swam. 

And, glimmering through the sun-haze warm, 

Far as the eye could roam, 
Dark billows of an earthquake storm 

Beflecked with clouds like foam, 
Their vales in misty shadow deep, 

Their rugged peaks in shine, 
I saw the mountain ranges sweep 

The horizon's northern line. 
14* 



88 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



There towered Chocorua's peak; and west, 

Moosehillock's woods were seen, 
With many a nameless slide-scarred crest 

And pine-dark gorge between. 
Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed cloud, 

The great Notch mountains shone, 
Watched over by the solemn-browed 

And awful face of stone! 

It is indeed a grand view of Lafayette and Mount Cannon which 
Prospect Hill affords. And some portions of each of the ten counties 
of New Hampshire are within the range of our vision there. It is a 
question if the dome of Mount Washington itself is not visible on the 
north. Several of the noblest isolated mountains of the state show 
themselves to the best advantage, — the dark mass of Moosehillock 
heaving like a whale just beginning to dive, the amber colored sides 
of the desolate Cardigan, the blue declivities of the true Kiarsarge 
sloping off on the south in Merrimack county, and far below, the pale 
shapes which tell us where 

Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amoskeag's fall 
The twin Uncanoonucs rise stately and tall. 

There are many persons who cannot make excursions that require 
horseback riding. The view from Mount Prospect should be espec- 
ially noticed for their benefit, since it can be thoroughly enjoyed at 
the cost of no more exertion than a wagon ride, and an absence of 
four hours from the hotel. 

Who that has driven on a clear day from Plymouth to Franconia 
can ever forget the ride ? Our most vivid impressions of its beauty 
are derived from a ride over it in the early summer, a year or two 
since. " The gold and the crystal cannot equal it ; and the exchange 
of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold." It was a perfect day of 
June. 

And what is so rare as a day in June? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days; 
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays: 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



89 



t Whether we look, or whether we listen, 

We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct Avithin it that reaches and towers, 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green, 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice. 
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean 

To be some happy creature's palace; 
The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 

Atilt like a blossom among the leave's, 
And lets his illumined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives ; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? 

It is to be regretted that the mountains are not visited during the 
splendid days of the early summer. From the middle of June to 
the middle of July, foliage is more fresh ; the cloud scenery is no- 
bler ; the meadow grass has a more golden color ; the streams are 
usually more full and musical ; and there is a larger proportion of 
the " long light " of the afternoon, which kindles the landscape into 
the richest loveliness. The mass of visitors to the White Mountains 
go during the dogdays, and leave when the finer September weather 
sets in with its prelude touches of the October splendor. In August 
there are fewer clear skies ; there is more fog ; the meadows are 
apparelled in more sober green ; the highest rocky crests may be 
wrapped in mists for days in succession ; and a traveller has fewer 
chances of making acquaintance with a bracing mountain breeze. 
The latter half of June is the blossom season of beauty in the moun- 
tain districts ; the first half of October is the time of its full-hued 
fruitage. 

Let us hope that some of our readers will find opportunity to visit 
the Pemigewasset valley before the first of July, and have leisure 
enough also to devote a day or two, if no more, to the village of 
Campton. Where the bees persistently congregate, the honey must 



90 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



be most plentiful. If the hovering and return of the artist bees is a 
decisive test, the nectar of beauty must be secreted near Campton 
on the Pemigewasset, and North Conway on the Saco, more freely 
than along any other of the usually travelled stage-routes of the 
mountains. 

Some one has described the White Mountains as " the beam of a 
pair of scales which drop some thirty miles, and hold on the East the 
broad valley of Conway, balanced on the West by the charming inter- 
vales of Campton." This figure w r ould be more applicable for con- 
trasting the position and beauty of the scenery around Bethel and 
North Conway. These villages do hang poised in position and in 
loveliness from the curving beam of the Mount Washington range, — 
the first depending from the eastern end of the chain on the fine of 
the Androscoggin, and the last from the western end on the line of 
the Saco. Campton is not tethered to the Mount Washington chain, 
but it may fairly be compared with North Conway for landscape 
charm. It hangs a little low T er down in latitude, and some artists 
have maintained that, in the scale of beauty, it forces North Conway 
to kick the beam. Others as stoutly deny this ; and we, grateful 
alike for the villages and artists, have no desire or intention, either 
to adjust or mingle in the dispute. 

Perhaps it is fair to say that the intervale alone in Campton is, in 
proportion to its extent, more picturesquely effective than that of 
North Conway. Being finely w r ooded, and better united to the bor- 
dering hills, it furnishes perfectly appropriate and beautiful fore- 
grounds to the favorite views of valley and mountains, w 7 hose flitting 
moods of superior beauty or grandeur have been promoted by many 
painters, Mr. Durand and Mr. Gay especially, into the abiding 
charm of art. The windings of the river in this intervale, with the 
beauty, variety, and abundance of its trees, makes West Campton 
rich in artists' " bits " of the utmost grace. Here, some elms, bor- 
dering large spaces of the smooth sward w T ith green domed tops, 
evenly poised upon their single columnar trunks, look, as an archi- 
tectural friend once expressed it, like unwalled chapter-houses to the 



/ 

THE PEMIGEW ASSET VALLEY. 



91 



cathedral groves. There, we find a sparkling group of varied foliage 
which we may call voluptuous, in which the golden plumes of the ; 
ash shine, perhaps, against the brown and olive darkness of the oak, 
and the butternut's pale yellow spray mingles with the shimmering 
gray of the beech, and the dull purple and emerald of the birch and 
wild cherry. 

A visit to a place like Campton might be well employed in making 
the eye more sensitive to the colors and the characters of trees. 
Every painter sees how striking are the contrasts of hue between the 
oak and the beech, the elm and the lime, the aspen and the maple. 
They are not merely different kinds of green, but they take on abso- 
lutely different colors as a subtile effluence around their green, which 
is revealed to a careful and sensitive sight. And every one who 
delicately enjoys the colors on the hills, in the hour before sunset, 
finds that a mountain slope arrayed in birches dyes itself in floods 
of different splendor from one that is covered with larger or mixed 
growths of forest. Many persons who go to the mountains cannot 
distinguish a maple from a beech, an aspen from a birch, or a fir- 
tree from a pine. The pleasures of taste, as well as the pleasures of 
knowledge, begin and increase with the power of detecting fine differ- 
ences, and of nicely discerning the individuality of objects. A man 
who should be thoroughly acquainted with the architecture of trees — 
the articulation of their boughs and branches, the angles or curves or 
arches which they describe, and which give each species a distinct 
character — the manner in which their foliage is set and massed, in 
which it plays with the wind or is swayed by it, and the hues in which 
their beauty or strength is draped, would find any landscape that pre- 
sents a variety of trees perpetually attractive. 

And the various hues of trees are no more marked than their 
various tones. The oak roars when a high wind wrestles with it ; 
the beech shrieks ; the elm sends forth a long, deep groan ; the ash 
pours out moans of thrilling anguish. Perhaps a mind curious for 
analogies might detect some relation not entirely fanciful between the 
colors of trees in full sunlight, and their tones when thoroughly wak 



92 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



ened by the -wind. Walter Scott once maintained that something 
might be done by the union of poetry and music to imitate those 
voices, giving a different measure to the oak, the pine, and the 
willow. Our own poet, James Russell Lowell, has written some 
charming interpretations of the characters of our prominent trees. 
Let us listen to some of his verses on " The Birch " : — 

Eippling through thy branches goes the sunshine, 
Among thy leaves that palpitate forever; 
Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prison'd 
The soul once of some tremulous inland river, 
Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah ! dumb, dumb forever. 

Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, 

Thy foliage like the tresses of a Dryad, 

Dripping about thy slim white stem, whose shadow 

Slopes quivering down the waters dusky quiet, 

Thou shrinkst, as on her bath's edge would some startled Dryad. 

Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; 
Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; 
Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience, 
And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping 
Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping. 

Thou art to me like my belovdd maiden, 

So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences; 

Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets 

Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses, 

And Nature gives me all her summer confidences. 

Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble, 
Thou sympathizest still; wild and unquiet, 
I fling me down, thy ripple, like a river, 
Flows valley-ward, where calmness is, and by it 
My heart is floated down into the land of quiet. 

In many places on the river banks, or in the dried channels of 
former freshets, and along the streams that feed the Pemigewasset, 
plentiful studies are found of tufts and beds of grasses, sedgy banks, 
weeds and flowering plants of the most splendid variety. Also fine 
studies of " interiors," with wild passages of mountain brook and 
cascade, can be made in some of the many ravines having their out- 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



93 



lets here. Surrounded with such beauty as Campton presents, 
Goethe's subtle and seductive poem " Ganymede " interprets the 
feeling, half mystic, half voluptuous, which Nature inspires : — 

How with morning splendor 
Thou round upon me glowest, 
Spring beloved! 

With thousandfold love-rapture 

How through my heart thrills 

Thy warmth everlasting, 

Holy and precious, 

Infinite Nature. 

Could I but compass thee 

Within these arms! 

Lo! on thy breast here 

Prone I languish; 

And thy flowers and thy grass 

Press themselves on my heart. 

Thou coolst the torturing 

Thirst of my bosom, 

Love breathing Morning wind! 

Calleth the nightingale 

Loving to me from the misty vale. 

I come, I come; 

Ah ! whither away ! 

Up! Upward it draws! 

The clouds are hovering 

Downward, the clouds they 

Condescend to passionate yearning! 

Here ! Here ! 

In your embraces 

Upward ! 

Embraced and embracing, 
Up ! Up to thy bosom, 
All loving Father! 

Those that know this remarkable poem in the German will recognize, 
we are sure, in the rhythm and faithfulness of this version, never 
published before, the blended delicacy and vigor of a master's touch. 

We have spoken on a former page of the beauty of the Welch 
Mountain, which forms the immediate background of the river view 
from Campton village. Its general shape is extremely picturesque. 

15 



94 THE WHITE HILLS. 

Being nearly destitute of forest covering, and showing large masses 
of bare quartz, it presents very beautiful and striking harmonies of 
the grays with neutral hues of blue and white, and at sunrise and 
sunset exhibits proportional increase of splendor. The Sandwich 




range, too, affords ample and important subjects to the dwellers in 
Campton for the enjoyment and study of mountain color and form. 
In all lights they are picturesque if not beautiful ; but there is no 
limit to the softness, purity, and magnificence of color with which the 
setting sun sometimes floods their broad and rugged sides. 

Of course the Franconia mountains form one of the leading attrac- 
tions in the landscape here, West Campton being the southernmost 
point in the valley from which they can be advantageously seen. As 



THE PEMIGEW ASSET VALLEY. 



95 



they are visible from the meadow as well as from the hill-sides, the 
choice of several different combinations of middle and foregrounds is 7 
offered to all artists, and to those who love complex and proportioned 
beauty in the landscapes near their summer resting-place. We have 
known artists to say that the marvellous middle ground of belt and 
copse, and meadow and river, back of which the three sharp spires 
of Lafayette and his associates tower, to face the heavier rocky wall 
which forms the western rampart of the Notch, is the most enchant- 
ing scene of the kind which this valley and that of the Saco can offer. 

In common daylight there is very little variety or picturesqueness 
in their aspect. No doubt persons who have seen mountains only 
under a dull sky, or through a very clear air, on a bright day, be- 
tween the hours of nine and four, suppose that all descriptions of 
their splendor are either deliberately manufactured for the sake of 
fine writing, or illusions of fancy, proofs that 

we receive but what we give, 
And in our life alone does Nature live. 

But let them study the Notch mountains of Franconia from the 
school-house in Campton, by the morning or evening light. They 
differ then from their ordinary aspects as much as rubies and sap- 
phires from pebbles. See the early day pour down the upper slopes 
of the three easterly pyramids ; then upon the broad forehead of the 
Profile Mountain, kindling its gloomy brows with radiance, and melt- 
ing the azure of its temples into pale violet ; and falling lower, stain- 
ing with rose tints the cool mists of the ravines, till the Notch seems 
to expand, and the dark and rigid sides of it fall away as they lighten, 
and recede in soft perspective of buttressed wall and flushed tower, — 
and then say whether, to an eye that can never be satiated with the blue 
of a hyacinth, the purple of a fuschia, and the blush of a rose, the gor- 
geousness ascribed to the mountains is a mere exercise of rhetoric, 
or a fiction of the fancy. Or, towards evening of midsummer, at 
the same spot, see the great hills assume a deeper blue or purple ; 
see the burly Cannon Mountain stand, a dark abutment, at the gate 



96 THE WHITE HILLS. 

of the Notch, unlighted except by its own pallor ; and, as the sun 
goes down, watch his last beams of crimson or orange cover with 
undevastating fire the pyramidal peaks of the three great Haystacks, 




and then decide whether language can recall or report the pomp of 
the spectacle, any more than the cold colors of art can exaggerate 
what the Creator writes there in chaste and glowing flame. 

Then, as if the earth and sea had been 
Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen 
Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, 
Around the vaporous sun, from which there came 
The inmost purple spirit of light, and made 
Their very peaks transparent. 

Have our readers considered this testimony of Mr. Ruskin ? " In 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



97 



some sense, a person who has never seen the rose-color of the rays of 
dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve or fifteen miles away, can 
hardly be said to know what tenderness in color means at all. Bright 
tenderness he may, indeed, see in the sky or in a flower, but this 
grave tenderness of the far-away hill-purples he cannot conceive." 

And now with the mountains in our mind's eye, from a point so 
favorable as Campton for enjoying their beauty, let us, before mak- 
ing a closer acquaintance with the Notch, raise the question of their 
use. Nothing is sublimer to the senses than a great mountain, 
though many other objects and forces of Nature are immeasurably 
more sublime to thought. A structure like Illimani or Aconcagua of 
the Andes, towering nearly five miles above the contented clods, bear- 
ing up the pine to look down upon the palm, defying the force of 
gravitation, 

Standing alone 'twixt the earth and the heavens, 
Heir of the sunset and herald of morn, 

thrills the eye by the heroic energy with which the soaring mass 
seems to be vital, and by which of its own will it cleaves the air and 
converses with the sky. And yet what insignificant things they are, 
after all, when we measure them by our thought, in their relation to 
the surface and depth of the globe ! On the rim of a race-course a 
mile in circuit, if it could be lifted up as a great wheel, a pebble- 
stone three inches high would be larger in proportion than Mount 
Lafayette is, as a bunch on the planet itself. The thickness of a 
sheet of writing paper on an artificial sphere, a foot in diameter, 
represents the eminence of the mountain chains. They are no more 
than the cracks in the varnish of such a ball. The roughnesses on 
the skin of an Havana orange are more marked than Chimborazo, 
Kinchin- Junga, and the valley of the Jordan, are upon the earth. 
And yet these trifling elevations and scratches reveal the heights and 
soundings of our knowledge of the planet. 

What do we know of the four thousand miles radius of the earth ? 
What do we know of the air above the highest mountain tops ? It 



98 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



grows rarer as we ascend ; and but a few miles above the highest of 
the Himalayas, no doubt, there is blackness of darkness, except to an 
eye that should turn directly to the sun. The domain of light and of 
knowledge lies within this petty film, whose top is nearly touched by 
the little mountain beads that slightly roughen the roundness of the 




world. Peel a pellicle from the planet, thinner in proportion than the 
thinnest of the laminae of an onion, and all our science and wisdom, 
and all life, too, will be stripped off. 

Yet, think of the uses of the little inequalities that we call moun- 
tains. Think of their service to the intellect. They are not excres- 
cences on the globe's surface, — ridges of superfluous matter bolted 
upon the original smoothness of our orb. Many of our readers pos- 



THE PEMIGEWASSET Y ALLEY. 



99 



sibly have seen pictures of mountains that look like mounds of putty, 
as though they had been stuck upon the landscape, — as though they 
had been thumbed into shape, and might be thumbed into any other 
form. But the mountains were heaved up from the planet's crust. 
It is in large measure by their help that the science of geology has 
advanced during the last century with rapid strides. They tell us 
something of what the earth's crust is made of, and the texture and 
thickness of its outer cuticles. By looking up, a man gains the same 
knowledge that he would acquire by sinking a mine of corresponding 
depth. The highest mountains are inverted shafts, — upspringing 
wedges of rock, flinging the garment of soil away, tilting and sepa- 
rating the strata through which they break, and standing bare for 
the scrutiny of science. Thus the highest mountain crests are tide 
lines of the force that slumbers in the planet's bosom. The most 
stiff and resistant features of the world to our senses, they are really 
the outbursts of the globe's passion, the witnesses of a pent fury 
that may yet break forth in violence not yet conceived, before which 
Ossa indeed is " but a wart," and Orizaba a mere toy. 

Well has it been said, that " mountains are to the rest of the body 
of the earth what violent muscular action is to the body of man. 
The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought 
out with fierce and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and 
strength ; the plains and the lower hills are the repose and the effort- 
less motion of the frame, when its muscles he dormant and concealed 
beneath the lines of its beauty, yet ruling those lines in their every 
undulation." This vigor, this fierce vitality, in which they had their 
origin, is the source of much of the exhilaration which the sight of 
their wild outlines inspires, even when the beholder is unconscious of 
it. The waves of flame, that drove up the great wedges of granite in 
New Hampshire through ribs of sienite and gneiss, bolted them with 
traps of porphyry and quartz, crusted them with mica schist, and 
cross riveted them with . spikes of iron, lead, and tin, suggest their 
power in the strength with which the mountains are organized into 
the landscape, just as the force of a man's temperament is shown in 
the lines of his jaw and nose. 



100 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, 
And the earth changes like a human face; 
The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, 
Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright 
In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, 
Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask — 
God joys therein ! The wroth sea's waves are edged 
With foam, white as the bitten lip of Hate. 
When, in the solitary waste, strange groups 
Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like, 
Staring together with their eyes on flame; — 
God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 

The uses of mountain ranges, in relation to the supply of water, 
are so evident that we need not dwell long upon them. It is plain 
that we could not live upon the globe in any state of civilization, if 
the surface had been finished as a monotonous prairie. Were it not 
for the great swells of land, the ridges and crests of rock, the wrin- 
kles, curves, and writhings of the strata, how could springs of water 
be formed ? what drainage could a country have ? how could the 
rains be hoarded in fountains and lakes ? where would be the store- 
houses of the snow and hail ? " Every fountain and river, from the 
inch-deep streamlet that crosses the village lane in trembling clear- 
ness, to the massy and silent march of the everlasting multitude of 
waters in Amazon or Ganges, owe their play and purity and power, 
to the ordained elevations of the earth." Ah, how does the aqueduct 
masonry of Rome, or the Croton and Cochituate system of supply for 
cities, compare with Nature's chain of reservoirs, — the Rocky Moun- 
tains, the Andes, and the Alleghanies, and the service-pipes she gul- 
lies in their granite for pastures, towns, cities, and states ! 

The richest beauty that invests the mountains suggests this branch 
of their utility. The mists that settle round them, above which their 
cones sometimes float, aerial islands in a stagnant sea ; the veils of 
rain that trail along them ; the crystal snow that makes the light 
twinkle and dance ; the sombre thunder-heads that invest them with 
Sinai-like awe, are all connected with their mission as the hydraulic 
distributors of the world, — the mighty troughs that apportion to the 
land the moisture which the noiseless solar suction "is ever lifting from 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



101 



the sea. Their peaks are the cradles, their furrows the first play- 
grounds, of the great rivers of the earth. 

It is an equally obvious truth, that mountain chains diversify cli- 
mates. By their condensing effect upon the wet sea-winds, they 
make some districts more moist than others, and so variegate fertil- 
ities and the products of vegetation. One side of a high mountain 
ridge receives much more rain than the other. For days together 
the valley of the Po is never clouded, because the Alps, shrouded in 
dense fogs, are drawing off the waters from the wet winds before 
they reach the Italian plains. And the Himalayas force the summer 
monsoons to wring out their bounty so thoroughly upon their south- 
erly sides, that the steppes of inland Asia suffer to compensate for 
the bounteous rivers and rich vegetation of the Indian peninsula. 
The Pacific shore under the loftiest Andes is very dry and compara- 
tively barren, because the trade winds, that blow across and enrich 
the countries of the Amazon from the Atlantic, are robbed of most 
of their bounty in scaling those cold summits from the East, and 
have little to disburse upon the western slopes. We are told that if 
a mountain system could be upheaved in Sahara, the hot breezes that 
sweep over it w^ould be chilled and compelled to disgorge their booty, 
—so that the wilderness, sprinkled with rain and veined with rivers, 
would in time " blossom as the rose." As to our supply of water 
and our irrigation, we must, with David, " lift up our eyes to the 
hills, from wheDce cometh our help." 

Mr. Ruskin notes it as one of the prominent uses of mountains, 
that they cause perpetual change in the soils of the earth. The 
physical geographers assure us that if the whole matter of the Alps 
were shovelled out over Europe, the level of the continent would be 
raised about twenty feet. And this process of levelling is continually 
going on. By a calculation, which he made in the valley of Cha- 
mouni, Mr. Ruskin believes that one of the insignificant runlets, only 
four inches wide and four inches deep, carries down from Mont Blanc 

16 



102 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



eighty tons of granite dust a year ; at which rate of theft at least 
eighty thousand tons of the substance of that mountain must be 
yearly transformed into drift sand by the streams, and distributed 
upon the plains below. On Whiteface Mountain, of the Sandwich 
group, a slide took place in 1820, which hurled down huge blocks of 
granite, sienite, quartz, felspar, and trap-rocks, and cut a deep 
ravine in the side of the mountain, several miles in extent. But 
compensation was made in part for its destructive fury. An exten- 
sive meadow at the base, which had borne only wild, coarse grasses, 
was rendered more fertile by the fine sediment, here and there four 
or five feet in depth, that was distributed upon it, and now produces 
excellent grass and white clover. Take a century or two into ac- 
count, and we find the mountains fertilizing the soil by the minerals 
which they restore to it to compensate the wastes of the harvests. 
" The hills, which, as compared with living beings, seem everlasting, 
are, in truth, as perishing as they. Its veins of flowing fountain 
weary the mountain heart, as the crimson pulse does ours ; the natu- 
ral force of the iron crag is abated in its appointed time, like the 
strength of the sinews in a human old age ; and it is but the lapse 
of the longer years of decay which, in the sight of its Creator, dis- 
tinguishes the mountain range from the moth and the worm." 

We see, then, in looking at a chain of lofty hills, and in thinking 
of their perpetual waste in the service of the lowlands, that the 
moral and physical worlds are built on the same pattern. They 
represent the heroes and all-beneficent genius. They receive upon 
their heads and sides the larger baptisms from the heavens, not to be 
selfish with their riches, but to give, — to give all that is poured upon 
them, — yes, and something of themselves with every stream and tide. 
When we look up at old Lafayette, or along the eastern slopes of 
Mount Washington, we find that the lines of noblest expression are 
those which the torrents have made, where soil has been torn out, 
and rocks have been grooved, and ridges have been made more ner- 
vous, and the walls of ravines have been channelled for noble pencil- 
lings of shadow, by the waste of the mountain in its patient suffering. 



v THE PEMIGEW ASSET VALLEY. 



103 



In its gala days of sunlight the artist finds that its glory is its char- 
acter. All its losses are glorified then into expression. The great; 
mountains rise in the landscape as heroes and prophets in history, 
ennobled by what they have given, sublime in the expressions of 
struggle and pain, invested with the richest draperies of light, be- 
cause their brows have been torn, and their cheeks been furrowed by 
toils and cares in behalf of districts below. Upon the mountains is 
written the law, and in their grandeur is displayed the fulfilment 
of it, that perfection comes through suffering. 

Let us again avail ourselves of Mr. Ruskin's help in unfolding the 
relations of mountains to changes of the air. " Change would, of 
course, have been partly caused by differences in soils and vegeta- 
tion, even if the earth had been level ; but to a far less extent than 
it is now by the chains of hills, which, exposing on one side their 
masses of rock to the full heat of the sun, (increased by the angle at 
which the rays strike on the slope,) and on the other casting a soft 
shadow for leagues over the plains at their feet, divide the earth not 
only into districts, but into climates, and cause perpetual currents of 
air to traverse their passes, and ascend or descend their ravines, 
altering both the temperature and nature of the air as it passes, in a 
thousand different ways ; moistening it with the spray of their water- 
falls, sucking it down and beating it hither and thither in the pools 
of their torrents, closing it within clefts and caves, where the sun- 
beams never reach, till it is as cold as November mists, then send- 
ing it forth again to breathe softly across the slopes of velvet fields, 
or to be scorched among sunburnt shales and grassless crags ; then 
drawing it back in moaning swirls through clefts of ice, and up into 
dewy wreaths above the snow-fields ; then piercing it with strange 
electric darts and flashes of mountain fire, and tossing it high in fan- 
tastic storm-cloud, as the dried grass is tossed by the mower, only 
suffering it to depart at last, when chastened and pure, to refresh the 
faded air of the far-off plains." 

But we come to the highest use which mountains serve when we 



104 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



speak of their beauty. No farm in Coos county has been a tithe so 
serviceable as the cone of Mount Washington, with the harvests of 
color that have been reaped from it for the canvas of artists, or for 
the joy of visitors. Think of the loss to human nature if the summits 
of Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau could be levelled, and their jagged 
sides, sheeted with snow and flaming with amethyst and gold, should 
be softened by the sun and tilled for vines and corn. Pour out over 
them every year all the wine that is wrung from the vineyards of 
Italy and France, and what a mere sprinkling in comparison with the 
floods of amber, of purple, and of more vivid and celestial flames with 
which no wine was ever pierced, that are shed over them by one 
sunrise, or that flow up their cold acclivities at each clear sunset ? 
The mountains are more grand and inspiring when we stand at the 
proper distance and look at them, than when we look from them. 
Their highest call is to be resting-places of the light, the stafls from 
which the most gorgeous banners of morning and evening are dis- 
played. And these uses we may observe and enjoy among the mod- 
erate mountains of New Hampshire. They are huge lay figures on 
which Nature shows off the splendors of her aerial wardrobe. She 
makes them wear mourning veils of shadow, exquisite lace-work of 
distant rain, hoary wigs of cloud, the blue costume of northwest 
winds, the sallow dress of sultry southern airs, white wrappers of dog- 
day fog, purple and scarlet vests of sunset light, gauzy films of moon- 
light, the gorgeous embroidery of autumn chemistries, the flashing 
ermine dropped from the winter sky, and the glittering jewelry 
strewn over their snowy vestments by the cunning fingers of the 
frost. These are the crops which the intellect and heart find waiting 
and waving for them, without any effort or care of mortal culture, on 
the upper barrenness of the hills. 

So call not waste that barren cone 
Above the floral zone, 
Where forests starve: 
It is pure use; — 
What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind 
Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse? 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



105 



And besides the beauty of light, let us hear Mr. Ruskin interpret 
the charm added to the earth by the geological relation of the hills to 
the country that is dependent from them, as well as upon them. This 
beauty is also part of their use. And it is to be accredited to the moun- 
tains as no small benefaction that they have been the means of adding 
the following passage to the treasury of English literature : " The great 
mountains lift the lowlands on their sides. Let the reader imagine, 
first, the appearance of the most varied plain of some richly cultivated 
country ; let him imagine it dark with graceful woods, and soft with 
deepest pastures ; let him fill the space of it, to the utmost horizon, 
with innumerable and changeful incidents of scenery and life ; lead- 
ing pleasant streamlets through its meadows, strewing clusters of cot- 
tages beside their banks, tracing sweet footpaths through its avenues, 
and animating its fields with happy flocks, and slow wandering spots 
of cattle ; and when he has wearied himself with endless imagining, 
and left no space without some loveliness of its own, let him conceive 
all this great plain, with its infinite treasures of natural beauty and 
happy human life, gathered up in God's hands from one edge of the 
horizon to the other, like a woven garment ; and shaken into deep 
falling folds, as the robes droop from a king's shoulders ; all its bright 
rivers leaping into cataracts along the hollows of its fall, and all its 
forests rearing themselves aslant against its slopes, as a rider rears 
himself back when his horse plunges ; and all its villages nestling 
themselves into the new windings of its glens ; and all its pastures 
thrown into steep waves of greensward, dashed with dew along the 
edges of their folds, and sweeping down into endless slopes, with a 
cloud here and there lying quietly, half on the grass, half in the air ; 
and he will have as yet, in all this lifted world, only the foundation 
of one of the great Alps. And whatever is lovely in the lowland 
scenery becomes lovelier in this change : the trees which grew heav- 
ily and stiffly from the level line of plain assume strange curves of 
strength and grace as they bend themselves against the mountain 
side ; they breathe more freely, and toss their branches more care- 
'essly, as each climbs higher, looking to the clear light above the top- 



106 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



most leaves of its brother tree ; the flowers which on the arable plain 
fell before the plough, now find out for themselves unapproachable 
places, where year by year they gather into happier fellowship, and 
fear no evil ; and the streams which in the level land crept in dark 
eddies by unwholesome banks, now move in showers of silver, and are 
clothed with rainbows, and bring health and life wherever the glance 
of their waves can reach." 



THE FKANCONIA NOTCH. 

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure 
In your novel western leisure; 
So cool your brows and freshly blue, 
As Time had nought for ye to do: 



While we enjoy a lingering ray, 

Ye still o'ertop the western day, 

Eeposing yonder on God's croft 

Like solid stacks of hay; 

So bold a line as ne'er was writ 

On any page by human wit; 

The forest glows as if 

An enemy's camp-fires shone 

Along the horizon. 

Or the day's funeral pyre 

Were lighted there; 

Edged with silver and with gold, 

The clouds hang o'er in damask fold, 

And with such depth of amber light 

The west is dight, 

Where still a few rays slant, 

That even Heaven seems extravagant. 

The Franconia Notch, to which the lines just quoted furnish an 
appropriate introduction, is a pass about five miles in extent between 
one of the western walls of Lafayette and Mount Cannon. The val- 
ley is about half a mile wide ; and the narrow district thus inclosed 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



107 



contains more objects of interest to the mass of travellers, than any 
other region of equal extent within the compass of the usual White 7 
Mountain tour. In the way of rock sculpture and waterfalls, it is a 
huge museum of curiosities. There is no spot usually visited in any 
of the valleys, where the senses are at once impressed so strongly and 
so pleasantly with the wildness and the freshness which a stranger 
instinctively associates with mountain scenery in New Hampshire. 
There is no other spot where the visitor is domesticated amid the 
most savage and startling forms in which cliffs and forest are com- 
bined. And yet there is beauty enough intermixed with the sublim- 
ity and the wildness to make the scenery permanently attractive, as 
well as grand and exciting. 

The mountains are not nearly so high, or so noble in form, around 
the Franconia Pass as around the Glen ; but the walls are much 
closer and more precipitous. The place where the Profile House is 
situated would be much more properly called a glen, than the opening 
which now bears that name by the Peabody River, at the base of 
Mount Washington. There is no wild and frowning rock scenery 
either visible or easily accessible from the Glen House. In the White 
Mountain Notch there is no hotel at which travellers stay. The 
Crawford House is situated just outside of it. And if there were 
a hotel so placed within it as to command its vast walls and its 
most powerful lines, the scene would be too terrific and desolate to 
win travellers to a visit of many days. The sides of the White 
Mountain Notch are many hundred feet higher than the highest cliff 
of Franconia. But they are torn with landslides and torrents ; there 
is very little forest growth upon them ; and their bare sand and 
gravel, and their scarred, grim ledges, overpower and awe sufficiently 
to overshadow the sense of pleasure and refreshment which one 
wants to feel in the scenery which he chooses to dwell in for several 
weeks or days. That which makes the White Mountain Notch the 
most astonishing spectacle, at the first visit, or on any short visit, 
which the whole region has to show, makes it the less welcome as a 
place to stay in. 



108 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



The Franconia Pass is not oppressive. Large portions of the wall 
opposite the Profile House are even more sheer than the WiHey 
Mountain, or Mount Webster, in the great Notch ; but it bends in a 
very graceful curve ; the purple tinge of the rocks is always grateful 
to the eye ; and instead of the sandy desolation over and around the 
Willey House, the forest foliage that clambers up the sharp acclivi- 
ties, fastening its roots in the crevices and resisting the torrents and 
the gale, relieves the sombreness of the bending battlement by its 
color, and soften its sublimity with grace. Every one who has been 
driven into Franconia from Bethlehem or from Littleton, and who has 
had the privilege of an outside seat on the stage, must have been 
struck with the gentle crescent line of the vast outworks of Lafayette, 
suggesting the sweep of a tremendous amphitheatre, whose walls are 
alive with the ascending orders of the wilderness. 

One of the most interesting portions of the steep easterly rampart 
of the Notch is the Eagle Cliff, immediately in front of the Profile 
House, which shoots up some fifteen hundred feet above the road. 
It derives its name from the fact that a pair of the winged " Arabs 
of the air " have kept far up on the cliff their " chamber near the 
sun." It is a charming object to study. Except in some of the 
great ravines of the Mount Washington range, which it costs great 
toil to reach, there is no such exhibition of precipitous rock to be 
found. And how gracefully it is festooned with the climbing birches, 
maples, spruces, and vines ! There are those to whom the sight of 
such a crag, sharply set at the angle of a mountain wall, is one of 
the most enjoyable and memorable privileges of a tour among the 
hills. Such will find the best points for appreciating the height and 
majesty of the Eagle Cliff, by ascending a few hundred feet on the 
Cannon Mountain opposite, or by walking to the borders of Profile 
Lake only a moderate distance from the hotel. If there were a pleas- 
ant boat on this small sheet of water, visitors would find it a most 
delightful use of the hour before sunset, to see from the further 
shore the ebbing of the ruddy fight from the base of the cliff, till 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



109 



fainter contrasts of purple and green are left again in the evening 
shadow. In thinking of that view as it was given, towards sunset, 
while seated under the shadow of the dark firs that hem the western 
edge of the Profile Lake, the music of the good old abbot's evening 
meditation, in Longfellow's " Golden Legend," floats into our mem- 
ory :— 

Slowly, slowly up the wall 
Steals the sunshine, steals the shade; 
Evening damps begin to fall, 
Evening shadows are display'd. 
Bound me, o'er me, everywhere, 
All the sky is grand with clouds, 
And athwart the evening air 
Wheel the swallows home in crowds. 
Shafts of sunshine from the west 
Paint the dusky windows red; 
Darker shadows, deeper rest, 
Underneath and overhead. 
Darker, darker, and more wan 
In my breast the shadows fall, 
Upward steals the life of man 
As the sunshine from the wall. 
From the wall into the sky, 
From the roof along the spire; 
Ah, the souls of those that die 
Are but sunbeams lifted higher. 

This cliff, and the whole wall with which it is connected, shows its 
height more impressively in some of the misty dogdays, when fogs 
play their tricks along its breastworks. Sometimes they break away 
above, and let the pinnacles of rock be seen disconnected from the 
base. Then we can hardly believe that Lafayette himself has not 
moved a little nearer, and pushed aside the curtains to look down at 
the Profile House. Sometimes they tear themselves into horizontal 
strips, through whose lines of gray the green and purple of the trees 
and rocks give peculiar pleasure to the eye. Sometimes they thicken 
below and break above, to show a dash or a long line of delicate 
amber light upon the edge of the wall. At last the whole texture 
gets mysteriously loosened, and the broad curtain begins at once to 
rise and melt. The sunshine pours unobstructed over the Notch, and 

17 



110 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



only here and there a shred of the morning fog is left to loiter up- 
wards. Watch if, and think of Bryant's poem : — 

Earth's children cleave to Earth — her frail 

Decaying children dread decay- 
Yon wreath of mist that leaves the vale, 

And lessens in the morning ray: 
Look how, by mountain rivulet. 

It lingers as it upward creeps, 
And clings to fern and copsewood set 

Along the green and dewy steeps: 
Clings to the fragrant kalmia, clings 

To precipices fringed with grass, 
Dark maples where the wood-thrush sings, 

And bowers of fragrant sassafras. 
Yet all in vain — it passes still 

From hold to hold, it cannot stay. 
And in the very beams that fill 

The world with glory, wastes away, 
Till, parting from the mountain's brow, 

It vanishes from human eye, 
And that which sprang of earth is now 

A portion of the glorious sky. 

The most attractive advertisement of the Franconia Notch to the 
travelling public is the rumor of the " Great Stone Face," that hangs 
upon one of its highest cliffs. If its inclosing walls were less grand, 
and its water gems less lovely, travellers would be still, perhaps, as 
strongly attracted to the spot, that they might see a mountain which 
breaks into human expression, — a piece of sculpture older than the 
Sphynx, — an intimation of the human countenance, which is the 
crown of all beauty, that was pushed out from the coarse strata of 
New England thousands of years before Adam. 

The marvel of this countenance, outlined so distinctly against the 
sky at an elevation of nearly fifteen hundred feet above the road, is 
greatly increased by the fact that it is composed of three masses of 
rock which are not in perpendicular line with each other. On the 
brow of the mountain itself, standing on the visor of the helmet that 
covers the face, or directly underneath it on the shore of the little 
lake, there is no intimation of any human features in the lawless 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. m 

rocks. Remove but a few rods either way from the guide-board on 
the road, where you are advised to look up, and the charm is dis-/ 
solved. Mrs. Browning has connected a law of historical and social 
insight with a passage and a fancy, that many of our readers will be 




glad to associate with their visit to the spot where the granite Profile 
is revealed to them : — 

Every age, 

Through being beheld too close, is ill-discerned 

By those who have not lived past it. We'll suppose 

Mount Athos carved, as Persian Xerxes schemed, 

To some colossal statue of a man: 

The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear, 

Had guess'd as little of any human form 

Up there, as would a flock of browsing goats. 

They'd have, in fact, to travel ten miles off 

Or ere the giant image broke on them, 

Full human profile, nose and chin distinct, 

Mouth, muttering rhythms of silence up the sky, 



112 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



And fed at evening with the blood of suns; 
Grand torso, — hand, that flung perpetually 
The largesse of a silver river down 
To all the country pastures. 'Tis even thus 
With times we live in, — evermore too great 
To be apprehended near. 

One of Mr. Hawthorne's admirable " Twice-told Tales " has woven 
a charming legend and moral about this mighty Profile ; and in his 
description of the face the writer tells us : "It seemed as if an enor- 
mous giant, or Titan, had sculptured his own likeness on the preci- 
pice. There was #ie broad arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in 
height ; the nose, with its long bridge ; and the vast lips, which, if 
they could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents 
from one end of the valley to the other." We must reduce the scale 
of the charming story-teller's description. The whole profile is about 
eighty feet in length ; and of the three separate masses of rock which 
are combined in its composition, one forms the forehead, another the 
nose and upper lip, and the third the chin. The best time to see the 
Profile is about four in the afternoon of a summer day. Then, stand- 
ing by the little lake at the base and looking up, one fulfils the appeal 
of our great transcendental poet in a literal sense in looking at the 
jutting rocks, and, 

through their granite seeming 
Sees the smile of reason beaming. 

The expression is really noble, with a suggestion partly of fatigue and 
melancholy. He seems to be waiting for some visitor or message. 
On the front of the cliff there is a pretty plain picture of a man with 
a pack on his back, who seems to be endeavoring to go up the valley. 
Perhaps it is the arrival of this arrested messenger that the old stone 
visage has been expecting for ages. The upper portion of the mouth 
looks a little weak, as though the front teeth had decayed, and the 
granite hp had consequently fallen in. Those who can see it with a 
thundercloud behind, and the slaty scud driving thin across it, will 
carry away the grandest impression which it ever makes on the be- 
holder's mind. But when, after an August shower, late in the after- 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



113 



noon, the mists that rise from the forest below congregate around it, 
and, smitten with sunshine, break as they drift against its nervous 
outline, and hiding the mass of the mountain which it overhangs, iso- 
late it with a thin halo, the countenance, awful but benignant, is " as 
if a mighty angel were sitting among the hills, and enrobing himself 
in a cloud vesture of gold and purple." 

The whole mountain from which the Profile starts is one of the 
noblest specimens of majestic rock that can be seen in New Hamp- 
shire. One may tire of the craggy countenance sooner than of the 
sublime front and vigorous slopes of Mount Cannon itself — especially 
as it is seen, with its great patches of tawny color, in driving up from 
the lower part of the Notch to the Profile House. Yet the interest 
of the mountain to visitors has been so concentrated in the Profile, 
that very few have studied and enjoyed the nobler grandeur on which 
that countenance is only a fantastic freak. And many, doubtless, have 
looked up with awe to the Great Stone Face, with a feeling that a 
grander expression of the Infinite power and art is suggested hi it 
than in any mortal countenance. " Is not this a place," we have 
heard it said, " to feel the insignificance of man ? " Yes, before 
God, perhaps, but not before matter. The rude volcanic force that 
puffed the molten rocks into bubbles, has lifted nothing so marvellous 
in structure as a human skeleton. The earthquakes and the frosts 
that have shaken and gnawed the granite of Mount Cannon into the 
rough semblance of an intelligent physiognomy, are not to be com- 
pared for wonder to the slow action of the chemistries that groove, 
chasten, and tint the bones and tissues of a human head mto corre- 
spondence with the soul that animates it, as it grows in wisdom and 
moral beauty. The fife that veins and girdles the noblest mountain 
on the earth, is shallow to the play of vital energies within a human 
frame. 

No mountain can 
Measure with a perfect man. 

The round globe itself is only the background upon which the human 
face is chiselled. Each one of us wears more of the Infinite art, — is 



114 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



housed in more of the Infinite beneficence, than is woven into the 
whole material vesture of New Hampshire. And the mind that can 
sap the mountain, untwist its structure, and digest the truth it hides, 
— the taste that enjoys its form and draperies, — the soul whose sol- 
emn joy, stirred at first by the spring of its peaks, and the strength 
of its buttresses, mounts to Him who " toucheth the hills and they 
smoke," — these are the voyagers for which the Creator built 

this round sky-cleaving boat 
Which never strains its rocky beams; 
Whose timbers, as they silent float, 
Alps and Caucasus uprear, 
And the long Alleghanies here, 
And all town- sprinkled lands that be, 
Sailing through stars "with all their history. 

The forenoon can be very profitably spent by guests in the Profile 
House who love mountain climbing, in scaling Mount Cannon, — after 
they have explored the track of the charming cascade, just back of 
the hotel, that flings its silver down with grace and music, to be 
stranded into the flashing tide of the Pemigewasset below. But tow- 
ards evening a visit must without fail be paid to 

ECHO LAKE. 

When we begin to criticize, or make exceptions to, the scenery of 
the great White Mountain range, we speak at once of the lack of 
water. It makes the artistic sense quite thirsty to live several weeks 
near their base. If we had full power over the scenery near the 
highest range to alter or amend it, we should order a lake to appear 
forthwith in " The Glen." Then the spot would be perfect. To be 
able to sail about over a liquid mirror covering the whole gorge of 
the Peabody River in front of the Glen House ; — to see the clouds 
sweeping under you in a mighty bowl of blue ; to paddle around the 
bend of such a lake towards Gorham, and catch the Narcissus of the 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



115 



range, Mount Madison, secluded from his fellows, gazing at his own 
symmetry ; to look down at the pyramid of Adams, hanging soft and t 
steady in an illusive sky ; to skim along in the shadow of Washington, 
observing the heavy roll of his shoulder like an arrested wave, or the 
delicate ambrotype of the nervous edge of the spur that bounds Tuck- 
erman's ravine ; to be able to watch the speckled lights and shadows 
slowly shifting over the whole line of the sunken chain ; — or, more fas- 
cinating than all, to see a gorgeous October in such a magic glass, 
snowy summits with trailing mists dropping from bulky slopes that are 
gay with blooming forests, — what is there this side the Alps that 
could then compare with that spot ? Oh ! for one rub on the lamp 
of Aladdin ! Oh, for the advent of some artist-Moses, whose rod 
might smite those rocks, and make the Peabody torrent swell and 
spread to the amplitude of such a silvery sheet, thus, far more than 
duplicating the beauty of the spot, while endowing the mountain 
chain with self-consciousness. 

But enough of imaginary lakes. Franconia is more fortunate in 
its little tarn that is rimmed by the undisturbed wilderness, and 
watched by the grizzled peak of Lafayette, than in the old Stone 
Face from which it has gained so much celebrity. Echo Lake is the 
only sheet of still water that nestles near any one of the higher 
White Mountains. How much joy has it fed in human hearts ! 
Something of its bounty expended upon the infant Pemigewasset is 
borne down into the Merrimack, and contributes to the power that 
moves the Wheels of Nashua and Lowell, and supplies a thousand 
operatives with bread. But its more sacred use is not narrowed to 
the bounds of the stream which it supplies in part with gentle pulse. 
Thousands have seen it whose hearts its springs have fed with un- 
wasting water, and in whose memory its beautiful surface, swept by 
the gentle edges of the summer breeze, and burnished by the sun- 
light, is a sweet and perennial symbol of purity and peace. 

We have heard of persons that were called " embodied sympa- 
thies." Is not this the true definition of a little mountain lake ? It 
is a mirror, an interpreter of what enfolds and oversweeps it. See 



116 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



what colors and forms it is stained with or hides ! The little segment 
of beach it repeats. The rocks around it it sets below as part of the 
wall of its under stillness. The climbing trees and the shadow of the 
steep shores make a large section of its borders dim with dusky 
green. The sky hues, blue or gray, brilliant or sober, dull or joyous, 




it clothes itself with. It answers to the temper of the wind, with smil- 
ing ripples, or slaty churlishness, or heaving petulance. It is glad in 
the colors of sunrise, and pensive as the flames of sunset cool in the 
west. Hardly a rod of its surface wears any color, when you look at 
it steadily, that can be said to belong to itself. And yet it does not 



THE PEMIGEW ASSET VALLEY. 



117 



merely mimic what is shown to it. It takes the moods of mountain, 
woods, and firmament into its own being, softly flashes their joy, or is 1 
saturated with their grief, and repeats to them their experience, as 
the heart of a friend returns the color of our fortunes or our moods. 
The mountains stand in Nature's eloquent hieroglyphics as the types 
of sturdy and suffering service ; the rivers, for unwearied, cheering, 
fife-renewing charities ; the little lakes, for the beauty, the sweetness, 
the refreshment of that noiseless sympathy, not revealing itself in the 
new products of an active beneficence like the moving waters, — from 
the rills that gush through tiny lanes of grass to streams that over- 
flow bounty upon the meadows, — but which none the less belongs to 
the exquisite and sacred ministries of love upon the earth, without 
which the world would be " a dry and thirsty land where no water 
is." How delicate and graceful in suggestion, melody, and fancy, 
are these verses from the poet Milnes : — 

Till death the tide of thought may stem, 
There's little chance of our forgetting 
The highland lake, the water gem, 
With all its rugged mountain-setting. 

Our spirits followed every cloud 
That o'er it, and within it, floated; 
Our joy in all the scene was loud, 
Yet one thing silently we noted: 

That, though the glorious summer hue 

That steeped the heav'ns could scarce be brighter, 

The blue below was still more blue, 

The very light itself was lighter. 

And each the other's fancy caught 
By one instinctive glance directed; 
How doubly glows the Poet's thought 
In the belov'd one's breast reflected! 

It is towards evening that visitors are usually drawn to the lake 
to sail upon it, and hear the echoes from which it derives its name. 
It is better worth visiting then, however, for its echoes of color than 
of sound. 

18 



118 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



For now the eastern mountain's head 
On the dark lake throws lustre red; 
Bright gleams of gold and purple streak 
Eavine and precipice and peak — 
(So earthly power at distance shovs; 
Reveals his splendor, hides his woes.) 

But the echoes are interesting, whether repealing from the moun- 
tain walls the notes of the voice, or 

Replying shrilly to the well-tuned horns, 

or rolling back on the shore the reports of the cannon that " tears the 
cave where Echo lies." These it returns in sevenfold reduplications 
of thunder, as wall behind wall of the mountain amphitheatre catches 
the sound on its crescent and tosses it up towards old Lafayette, 

Till high upon his misty side 
Languish' d the mournful notes, and died. 
For never sounds, by mortal made, 
Attain' d his high and haggard head, 
That echoes but the tempest's moan, 
Or the deep thunder's rending groan. 

The last four lines our readers will not understand as referring to 
the noise of the cannon which, of course, must be clearly enough 
heard on the top of Lafayette. For all screams of the human voice 
or bugle notes, however, and such " sounds by mortals made," it is as 
true for Lafayette as for " stern old Coolin," in whose behalf Scott 
wrote it. Those of our readers who are familiar with Wordsworth's 
poems on the naming of places, will at once recall the passage which 
we here transcribe, as the most vivid description of mountain echoes 
in the compass of English literature. 

When I had gazed perhaps two minutes space, 
Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld 
That ravishment of mine, and laughed aloud. 
The Rock, like something starting from a sleep, 
Took up the Lady's voice, and laughed again; 
That ancient Woman, seated on Helm-crag, 
Was ready with her cavern; Hammar-scar, 
And the tall Steep of Silver-how, sent forth 
A noise of laughter; southern Loughrigg heard, 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



119 



And Fairfield answered "with a mountain tone; 
Helvellyn far into the clear blue sky- 
Carried the Lady's voice,— old Skiddaw blew 
His speaking-trumpet; — back out of the clouds 
Of Glaramara southward came the voice; 
And Kirkstone tossed it from his misty head. 

Thus far, we have been held by the attractions in the upper part 
of Eranconia Notch that immediately surround the Profile House. 
We must now follow the Pemigewasset a few miles below, to the 
southern opening of the pass, where the Flume House commands 
the widening valley. Those who would thoroughly enjoy a forenoon, 
and taste with eye and ear the freshness of the forest, the glancing 
light on a mountain stream, the occasional rare beauty of the mosses 
on its banks, the colors at the bottom of its cool, still pools, the 
overarching grace of its trees, or the busy babble of its broken and 
sparkling tide, should walk from one hotel to the other, down the 
river which runs parallel with the road, but which is for the most 
part concealed from it by the forest. A real lover of Nature, who 
has time at command, will no more consent to lose the pleasures 
which these rambles give in unveiling the coy charms of Nature's 
wildness, for the sake of the greater ease and speed of the stage, 
than he would think of taking his " dinner concentrated in a 
pill." 

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher tells us : "I have always wished that 
there might be a rock-spring upon my place. I could wish to 
have, back of the house some two hundred yards, a steep and tree- 
covered height of broad, cold, and mossy rocks — rocks that have 
seen trouble, and been upheaved by deep inward forces, and are 
lying in any way of noble confusion, full of clefts, and dark and 
mysterious passages, without echoes in them, upholstered with pendu- 
lous vines and soft with deep moss. Upon all this silent tumult of 
wild and shattered rocks, struck through with stillness and rest, the 
thick forest should shed down a perpetual twilight. The only glow 
that ever chased away its solemn shadows should be the red rose-light 
of sunsets, shot beneath the branches and through the trunks, lighting 

18* 



120 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



up the gray rocks with strange golden glory." Mr. Beecher refers 
to the light which Longfellow has described in Hiawatha : — 

Slowly o'er the simmering landscape 
Fell the evening's dusk and coolness, 
And the long and level sunbeams 
Shot their spears into the forest, 
Breaking through its shields of shadow, 
Bushed into each secret ambush, 
Searched each thicket, dingle, hollow. 

" What light is so impressive as this last light of the day streaming 
into a forest so dark that even insects leave it silent ? Yes, another 
light is as strange— -that rose-light of the afternoon, which shines 
down a hill-side of vivid green grass, taking its hues, and strikes 
through the transparent leaves into the forest below, and spreads 
itself along the ground in a tender color for which we have no name, 
as if green were just melting into rose color, and orange color were 
just seizing them both. 

" But to return to the spring. In such a rock forest as I have 
spoken of, far up in one of its silent aisles, a spring should burst 
forth, making haste from the seams of the rock, as if just touched 
with the prophet's rod — cold, clear, copious, and musical from its 
birth. All the way to the outer edge of the forest it should find 
its own channels, and live its own life, unshaped by human hands. 
But before the sun touched it, we should have a rock reservoir, into 
which it should gather its congregation of drops now about to go 
forth into useful life." 

The Basin, about a mile from the Flume House, to which the walk 
down the Pemigewasset leads us, is just what the poetic preacher 
would desire to have transported to his grounds. The granite bowl, 
sixty feet in circumference, is filled with water ten feet deep, that 
is pellucid as air. The rocky shelf, twenty feet above, has been 
grooved by a cascade that perpetually pours over ; and into the 
depths of cool shadow below, golden flakes of light sink down like 
falling leaves. If it did not he so near the dusty road, or if a land- 
scape gardener could be commissioned to arrange the surroundings of 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



121 



it, it would be as rare a gem as the Franconia cabinet of curiosities 
could show. 

There is a silent pool, whose glass 

Reflects the lines of earth and sky; 
The hues of heaven along it pass, 

And all the verdant forestry 

And in that shining downward view, 

Each cloud, and leaf, and little flower, 
Grows 'mid a watery sphere anew, 

And doubly lives the summer hour. 



Beside the brink, a lovely maid 
Against a furrowed stem is leaning, 

To watch the painted light and shade 
That give the mirror form and meaning. 

Her shape and cheek, her eyes and hair, 
Have caught the splendor floating round; 

She in herself embodies there 
All life that fills sky, lake, and ground. 

And while her looks the crystal meets, 
Her own fair image seems to rise; 

And, glass-like, too, her heart repeats 
The world that there in vision lies. 



The best way to enjoy the beauty of the Basin, is to ascend to the 
highest of the cascades that slide along a mile of the slope of the 
mountain at the west. Then follow down by their pathways, as they 
make the rocks now white with foam, now glassy with smooth, thin, 
transparent sheets, till they mingle their water with the Pemigewas- 
set at the foot, and pouring their common treasury around the groove 
worn into the rocky roof, fall with musical splash into the shadowed 
reservoir beneath. Wordsworth has versified a tradition connected 
with such a pool among the Cumberland hills. We can enjoy the 
poetry of it by the Basin, if we are not allowed to associate its pathos 
with the air shadowed by that mossy granite, and moist with spray 
that broke not long before in rain upon the mountain-tops. 



A love-lorn Maid, at some far-distant time, 
Came to this hidden pool, whose depths surpass 



122 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



In crystal clearness Dian's looking-glass; 

And, gazing, saw that Rose, which from the prime 

Derives its name, reflected as the chime 

Of echo doth reverberate some sweet sound: 

The starry treasi;re from the blue profound 

She longed to ravish; — shall she plunge, or climb 

The humid precipice, and seize the guest 

Of April, smiling high in upper air? 

Desperate alternative ! what fiend could dare 

To prompt the thought? Upon the steep rock's breast 

The lonely Primrose yet renews its bloom, 

Unteuched memento of her hapless doom ! 

If we -were pained a little by the ill-framing of the Basin, we cannot 
withhold admiration and gratitude that the approach to 



THE FLUME 

has been so pleasantly preserved from everything that can intrude by 
discordant associations upon its romantic charms. From the travelled 
road we pass into a rough, winding wagon-road in the forest. Leav- 
ing the wagon, we mount by a footpath that leads nearer and nearer 
to the sweet melody, that gives a promise to the ear which is not to 
be broken to the hope. Soon we reach the clean and sloping granite 
floors over which the water slips in thin, wide, even sheets of crystal 
colorlessness. Above this, we meet those gentle ripples over rougher 
ledges that are embossed with green. Then, still higher up, where 
the rocks grow more uneven, we are held by the profuse beauty of 
the hues shown upon the bright stones at the bottom of the little 
translucent basins and pools. Still above, we come to the remark- 
able fissure in the mountain, more than fifty feet high, and several 
hundred feet long, which narrows, too, towards the upper end, till it 
becomes only twelve feet wide, and which, doubtless, an earthquake 
made for the passage of the stream which the visitors are now to 
ascend. We go up, stepping from rock to rock, now walking along 
a little plank pathway, now mounting by some rude steps, here and 



THE PEMIGEW ASSET VALLEY. 



128 



there crossing from side to side of the ravine by primitive little 
bridges, that bend under the feet and that are railed by birch-poles, 
and then climbing the rocks again, while the spray breaks upon us 
from the dashing and roaring stream, till we arrive at a little bridge 
which spans the narrowest part of the ravine. 




How wild the spot is ! Which shall we admire most, — the glee of 
the little torrent that rushes beneath our feet ; or the regularity and 
smoothness of the frowning walls through which it goes foaming out 
into the sunshine ; or the splendor of the dripping emerald mosses 



124 THE WHITE HILLS. 

that line them ; or the trees that overhang their edges ; or the huge 
boulder, egg-shaped, that is lodged between the walls just over the 
bridge where we stand, — as unpleasant to look at, if the nerves are 
irresolute, as the sword of Damocles, and jet held by a grasp out of 
which it will not slip for centuries ? Was ever such an amount of 
water put to more various and romantic use, in being poured down a 
few hundred feet for calmer and prosaic service in the river below ? 

The struggling Rill insensibly is grown 

Into a Brook of loud and stately march, 

Crossed ever and anon by plank or arch; 

And, for like use, lo! what might seem a zone 

Chosen for ornament — stone matched with stone 

In studied symmetry, with interspace 

For the clear waters to pursue their race 

Without restraint. How swiftly have they flown, 

Succeeding — still succeeding! Here the Child 

Puts, when the high-swoln Flood runs fierce and wild, 

His budding courage to the proof; and here 

Declining Manhood learns to note the sly 

And sure encroachments of infirmity, 

Thinking how fast time runs, life's end how near! 

One should remain at the Flume House a day or two, at least, in 
order to have the privilege of visiting " The Flume " two or three 
times. Most persons see it only once, and then in connection with 
large parties when there is too much confusion, distraction, and 
chatter. The early morning is the best time to seek it; and if not 
more than three or four will go together, the beauty of the place will 
open itself as it cannot in the first visit, and as it will not to a crowd. 
In the Odyssey we read of 

a lovely cave, 
Dusky and sacred to tie Nymphs, whom men 

Call Naiads 

In it, too, are long looms 
Of stone, and there the Nymphs do weave their robes, 
Sea-purple, wondrous to behold. Aye-flowing 
Waters are there. Two entrances it hath ; 
That to the north is pervious unto men; 
That to the south more sacred is, and there 
Men enter not, but 'tis the Immortals' path. 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



125 



Tins southerly entrance to the Flume may be found by those who 
seek it quietly, and with reverence for the Spirit out of whose peren 
nial bounty all beauty pours. 

If we could visit Franconia in winter we should, no doubt, find 
scenery more startling than any which the summer has to offer. 
Those of our readers will believe it who have seen stereoscopic 
views of the Flume when 

those eagle-baffling mountains 
Slept in their shrouds of snow ; — beside the ways 

The waterfalls were voiceless — for their fountains 
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now, 
Or by the curdling winds — like brazen wings 

Which clanged along the mountain's marble brow — 
Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung 
And filled with frozen light the chasm below. 

The Flume is the chief attraction in the immediate neighborhood 
of the Flume House, as the Profile is of the narrower portion of the 
Notch five miles above. And the Pool is another of its resources, — 
a gloomy, natural well in the forest, a hundred fifty feet broad, and 
about as deep, which holds perpetually about forty feet of water. 

At noon-day here 
'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night. 

If this was hollowed out for Naiads, they must be of a very sullen 
temper, Nymphs of the Stygian order, that love 

some uncouth cell, 
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings 
And the night raven sings. 

One of the grandest cascades of the mountain region has been 
discovered on Moosehillock River, the child of a hill unnamed as yet, 
which is climbed by a path about two miles below the hotel. It is in 
such a hurry to get away from home, that it goes on the jump, almost 
all the way, to join the Pemigewasset, making two leaps of eighty 
feet each, one immediately after the other, which, as we climb 
towards them, gleam as one splendid fine of light through the trees 

19 



126 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



and shrubbery that fringe the rocky cleft. Is it not possible to give 
them a more appropriate name than " Georgiana Falls ? " The view 




from the summit of the ridge that nurtures this adventurous stream, 
has been pronounced by the native philosopher, whom many of our 



THE EEMIGE WAS SET VALLEY. 



127 



readers have heard discourse at the Pool about geology and the fate 
of Captain Symmes, " the stalwartest prospect in all Franconi'." 

But the view from the Flume House itself is a perpetual refresh- 
ment, and one needs not seek by hard climbing or wandering for 
any increased temptation to contentment. No scenes can be more 
strongly contrasted in spirit and influence than those around the two 
hotels, five miles apart. From the Flume House the general view is 
cheerful and soothing. There is no place among the mountains where 
the fever can be taken more gently and cunningly out of a worried 
or burdened brain. So soft and delicate are the general features of 
the outlook over the widening Pemigewasset valley ! So rich the 
gradation of the fights over the miles of gently sloping forest that 
sweeps down towards Campton ! So pleasant the openings here 
and there that show a cluster of farm-houses, and the bright beauty 
of cultivated meadows inclosed by the deeper green of the wilder- 
ness ! How can the eye ever drain, or the mind ever weary of the 
loveliness in form and color of those hills that bubble off to the 
horizon ? And here, too, we can have more of the landscape beauty 
of the larger mountains than the greater nearness of the Profile 
House to them would allow. The three peaks of the highest Hay- 
stacks, Lafayette, Pleasant, and Liberty, are in view, and at evening 
one can see the glorious purple mount the forests that hang shaggy 
on their sides, — extinguishing the green as completely as if the trees 
for miles had suddenly been clothed with leaves of amethyst, — and 
then chased by the shadow retreat upwards till it dyes the rocks with 
its harmless fire, and still upwards to the peaks, and then leaps to the 
clouds above, where 

slowly from the scene 
The stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts, 
And puts them back into his golden quiver. 

Or, by an easy climb of half an hour up Mount Pemigewasset 
directly back of the hotel, — a climb not at all difficult in dry weather 
to ladies, — the sunset view will be far more impressive. The spurs 



128 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



and hollows of Lafayette and his associates will be lighted up by the 
splendor that pours into them from the west. It searches and reveals 
all the markings of the torrents ; it gilds the tautness of the rocky 
tendons that stretch from the summits to the valleys, and that run some- 
times in hard lines and sometimes in curves full of rebellious energy., 
like a tough bow strung to the utmost tension ; and it pours upon the 




innumerable populace of trees which the mountain sides support one 
wide blaze of purple, which slowly burns off upward, leaving twilight 
behind it, and gleaming on the barren crests, long after the valley, 
which stretches in view for twenty miles, is dimmed with shade. 

As we clomb, 
The Valley, opening out her bosom, gave 
Fair pi-ospect, intercepted less and less, 
O'er the flat meadows, far off, 
And yet conspicuous, stood the old Church-tower 
In majesty presiding over fields 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



129 



And habitations seemingly preserved 
From the intrusion of a restless -world 
By rocks impassable and mountains huge. 

Soft heath this elevated spot supplied, 

And choice of moss-clad stones, -whereon we couched 

Or sate reclined; admiring quietly 

The general aspect of the scene; but each 

Not seldom over-anxious to make known 

His own discoveries; or to favorite points 

Directing notice, merely from a Avish 

To impart a joy, imperfect while unshared. 

That rapturous moment never shall I forget 

"When these particular interests were effaced 

From every mind! — Already had the sun, 

Sinking with less than ordinary state, 

Attained his western bound ; but rays of light — 

Now suddenly diverging from the orb 

Retired behind the mountain tops or veiled 

By the dense air — shot upwards to the crown 

Of the blue firmament — aloft and wide: 

And multitudes of little floating clouds, 

Through their ethereal texture pierced — ere we, 

Who saw, of change were conscious — had become 

Vivid as fire; clouds separately poised, — 

Innumerable multitude of forms 

Scattered through half the circle of the sky ; 

And giving back, and shedding each on each, 

With prodigal communion, the bright hues 

Which from the unapparent fount of glory 

They had imbibed, and ceased not to receive. 

We have thus far been engaged with the aisles and galleries, the 
fonts and crypts, of this mountain cathedral of Franconia, but hare 
not attempted to mount the spire which springs from a corner of the 
northerly entrance. Mount Lafayette, which is now ascended by a 
bridle path that winds into the forest about midway between the two 
hotels, is a little over five thousand feet in height — higher therefore 
than the loftiest of the mountains of Scotland. In form and charac- 
ter it is unlike Mount Washington, although in geological structure it 
is essentially similar. It differs in expression, to the eye of an artist 
who studies its outlines from the occasional openings along the steep 
ascent, as a keen, nervous temperament differs from a square-shoul- 
dered, burly, and bilious frame. 



130 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



It does not require so long a ride on horseback to reach the peak 
of Lafayette as to scale Mount Washington ; but the average ascent 
is more steep, and after heavy rains the mud will be found more 
troublesome than, the sharpness of the angles that must be climbed. 
One unacquainted with mountain paths, and the trustworthy compe- 
tence of the ponies, whose hoofs get used to striking fire from the 
primeval granite of their upper stairways, would imagine, on the first 
ascent to the peak, that there was great danger in the expedition, 
and would think, no doubt, that it was a remarkable chance or Provi- 
dence that returned him safely. But the peril is not worth thinking 
of. The mules of the Andes are not more surefooted than the 
horses prove to be that mount far above the nests of the eagles, on 
the sharp fin-like ridges of Lafayette, from which, on one side, tremen- 
dous gorges sweep, and on the other the most lovely of level land- 
scapes are displayed. Any man with two legs that can sit upright 
on a horse needs have no fear of making the adventure. Indeed, 
even the bipedal condition is not essential. When we made our last 
ascent of the mountain, a friend was of the party whom accident had 
robbed of one of the natural supports which are impartially supplied 
to the human race. His genius, however, has supplied the deficiency 
not only hi his own case, but for a multitude of others, whose grati- 
tude is a noble part of his reward, by a limb almost as good for walk- 
ing as nature furnishes, and relieved from numberless inconveniences 
and ills which we must take with the more supple organism of flesh 
and blood. He mounted the horse at the Profile House, and did not 
dismount till he could put Dr. Palmer's artificial leg, in company 
with the real limb which Nature gave him, on the rocky apex of 
Lafayette. We could add graceful testimony to the attractions of 
Franconia, as well as to the versatility of our companion, if we could 
print the poem which he wrote on the excursion, that falls under our 
notice as these pages are passing through the press. 

Ah, the pleasure, if we have been long pent in the city, of tasting 
the freshness of the mountain air by the ascent of the steep wilder- 
ness on horseback ! Each cell of the lungs is a breathing and joyous 



THE PEMIGEWASSET VALLEY. 



131 



palate. Cheerily we cross the trees which brutal winter tempests 
have uprooted and tilted over to die athwart the path ! And how 
charmingly the sounds of the wilderness fall on the ear, — the twitter 
of the birch leaves, the deeper tone of the beech, the sigh of the 
hemlock, and the long-drawn moan of the pine ! When the horse 
stops for rest, listen to the tap of the woodpecker on some withered 
trunk, a death drum to nests of bugs and knots of worms, that think 
themselves safe against such detective police ; next to the whirr of a 
startled partridge ; soon to the slender, long-drawn, honeyed whistle of 
the fife-bird, ending with a clear and thrice-repeated dactyl, as if call- 
ing some distant friend by the name of " Peabody ; " and then to the 
hysteric chatter of scatter-brained squirrels, and the brisk clock-wind- 
ing which they parody in their throats ! Have our readers ever seen 
Mr. Thoreau's vivid description of a squirrel ? We will quote part 
of it. " One would approach at first Avarily by fits and starts, like a 
leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful 
speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his 
6 trotters ' as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that 
way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time. Then 
suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somer- 
set, as if all the eyes in the universe were fixed on him, — for all the 
motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, 
imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl, — wasting more 
time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk 
the whole distance, — I never saw one walk, — before you could say 
' Jack Robinson,' he would be in the top of a young pitch-pine, wind- 
ing up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing 
and talking to all the universe at the same time " And to this inspi- 
ration of the lungs and ear in the forest, must be added the expecta- 
tion of grand scenery towards which we are riding, and the zest which 
the ever-shifting network of light and shadow over the tree trunks 
and the leaves affords to the eye. 

Lafayette is so differently related to the level country, as the Duke 
of western Coos, that the view from his upper shoulders and summit 



132 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



has an entirely different character from that which Mount Washing- 
ton commands. In the first place, the Mount Washington range 
itself is prominent in the landscape, and the sight of it with all its 
northerly and western braces certainly does much to make up for 
the large districts which it walls from vision. Of course, with the 
exception of this range, there is no other mountain whose head 
intercepts the sweep of the eye. But it is the lowlands that are 
the glory of the spectacle which Lafayette shows his guests. The 
valleys of the Connecticut and Merrimack are spread west and south- 
west and south. With what pomp of color are then- growing harvests 
inlaid upon the floor of New England ! Here we see one of Nature's 
great water-colors. She does not work in oil. Every tint of the 
flowers ; all the gradations of leaf-verdure ; every stain on the rocks ; 
every shadow that drifts along a mountain slope, in response to a 
floating cloud ; the vivid shreds of silver gossamer that loiter along 
the bosom of a ridge after a shower ; the luxurious chords of sunset 
gorgeousness ; the sublime arches of dishevelled light, — all are Na- 
ture's temptation and challenge to the intellect and cunning of the 
artist to mimic the splendor with which, by water and sunbeams, she 
adorns the world. 

When we can see them from the proper height and in their rela- 
tions, common facts wear a ravishing beauty. It is so in the realm 
of science when we mount to a grand generalization ; it is so when 
we merely rise in space, and see the common fields and farms re- 
duced to patches of color on the earth's robe. There is no house 
on the summit of Lafayette, and therefore we cannot hide a moment 
from whatever grandeur or loveliness the day supplies. 

See yonder little cloud, that, borne aloft 
So tenderly by the wind, floats fast away 
Over the rocky peaks ! It seems to me 
The body of St. Catherine, borne by angels ! 

It is the precursor of others that roll out of the northwest, to 
wrap the peak in cold gray mist for a few moments. But it is only 
that they may be torn away again, and that we may be surprised by 



THE PEMIGEWASSET Y ALLEY. 



133 



the contrast of their ashy gloom with the new created world that 
soon spreads over and beneath us 

Its floors of flashing light, 
Its vast and azure dome, 
Its fertile, golden islands, 
Floating on a silver sea. 

Yes, it is the semblance of a vaguely tinted ocean that is produced 
by the obscure and tender colors that stretch over hundreds of square 
miles to the horizon. What a privilege it would be to be removed 
far enough into space to observe the motion without losing the color 
of the globe, — to see the morning break upon the Himalayas, and 
the vast blue of the ocean under the noon, and sunset flood the 
Andes with violet and gold,— to watch the creeping of spring over the 
northern latitudes, and 

Summers, like blushes, sweep the face of earth. 

This is the privilege with which the great German poet endows 
the angels. He makes them sing, in the opening hymn of " Faust," 

And fleetly, thought surpassing, fleetly 
The earth's green pomp is spinning round; 
Where Paradise alternates sweetly 
With night terrific and profound. 

Surely, no man ever earned his sight seeing. It is reward enough 
for an angel to be able simply to read the geography of this globe 
through its delicate sapphire-tinted vesture, as it rolls noiselessly to 
bathe its checkered lands with light. 

The sight gives angels strength, though greater 
Than angels' utmost thought sublime; 
And all thy wondrous works, Creator, 
Are glorious as in Eden's prime. 

But why should we attempt in prose, or in random passages, any 
description of the view from Lafayette, when one of Bryant's poems 
interprets for us the relations of the mountain to the glen, the sharp- 
ness of its outlines, the beauty of the Pemigewasset that flows from 
its base to wind through fat farms, and the emotions which the com- 

20 



134 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



bined grandeur and loveliness inspire ? It is difficult to believe that 
it was not written expressly for the spot. 

There, as thou stand' st, 
The haunts of men below thee, and around 
The mountain summits, thy expanding heart 
Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world 
To which thou art translated, and partake 
The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look 
Upon the green and rolling forest tops, 
And down into the secrets of the glens, 
And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive 
To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once, 
Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds, 
And swarming roads, and there on solitudes 
That only hear the torrent, and the wind, 
And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice 
That seems a fragment of some mighty wall, 
Built by the hand that fashioned the old world, 
To separate its nations, and thrown down 
When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path 
Conducts you up the narrow battlement. 
Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild 
With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint, 
And many a hanging crag. But, to the east, 
Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs, — 
Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear 
Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark 
With the thick moss of centuries, and there 
Of chalky whiteness where the thunderbolt 
Has splintered them. It is a fearful thing 
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see 
Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall 
Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base 
Dashed them in fragments; and to lay thine ear 
Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound 
Of winds, that struggle with the woods below, 
Come up like ocean murmurs. But the scene 
Is lovely round; a beautiful river there 
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads, 
The paradise he made unto himself, 
Mining the soil for ages. On each side 
The fields swell upward to the hills. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



CHOCORUA, NORTH CONWAY, AND THE NOTCH. 



Farewell, ye streets ! Again Til sit 
On crags to watch the shadmcs flit ; 
To list the buzzing of the bee, 
Or branches waving like a sea ; 
To hear far off the cuckoo's note, 
Or lark's clear carol high afloat, 
And find a joy in every sound, 
Of air, the water, or the ground, 
Of fancies full, though fixing nought, 
And thinking — heedless of my thought. 

Farewell! and in the teeth of care 
Til breathe the buxom mountain air, 
Feed vision upon dyes and hues 
That from the hill-top interfuse, 
Uliite rocks, and lichens born of spray, 
Dark heather tufts, and mosses gray, 
Green grass, blue sky, and boulders brown, 
With amber waters glistening down, 
And early flowers, blue, white, and pink, 
That fringe with beauty all the brink. 

Mackay. 



/ 



THE SACO VALLEY. 

"We once heard of a traveller who Trent down to New Orleans, 
every spring, and came North just fast enough to keep pace with the 
strawberries. He managed to rise on the degrees of latitude at even 
speed with the bounteous vines, and, ascending village by village, and 
city after city, plucked and ate, and thus extended the spring-time 
for his palate ah the way from the Gulf of Mexico to Montreal. How 
charming it would be to follow the fresh foliage and the apple blossoms 
in their northern march from Charleston to East-port ! What a rich 
year in which one should have nearly three months of the heart of 
spring, by riding thus on the crest of the earliest quickening wave, 
that breaks in green and white over the fields and farms of half a 
continent ! 

We have sometimes duplicated the opening season of the year 
by a visit to the White Mountains through the Saco valley, after 
the blossoms had faded from the lower districts of New England. 
Indeed, about the last of May one can have a faint touch of the 
charm of Switzerland, by driving through North Conway and The 
Glen to Gorham. 

The sun looks o'er, with hazy eve, 
The snowy mountain-tops which lie 
Piled coldly up against the sky: 

Dazzling and white! save where the bleak, 
Wild winds have bared some splintering peak, 
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak. 

Yet green are Saco's banks below, 
And belts of spruce and cedar show 
Dark fringing round those cones of snow. 



138 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



The earth hath felt the breath of spring, 
Though yet on her deliverer's wing 
The lingering frosts of winter cling. 

Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks, 
And mildly from its sunny nooks 
The blue eye of the violet looks. 

. And odors from the springing grass, 
The sweet birch and the sassafras, 
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass. 

Her tokens of renewing care 
Hath Nature scattered everywhere, 
In bud and flower and warmer air. 

We can recall a most singular combination of such freshness of 
bloom in the Saco valley, with one of the very wildest aspects 
which the mountains ever assume. Just where we expected the cul- 
minating pleasure of the ride from Centre Harbor to Conway, — that 
is on the top of the hill in Eaton, we experienced a singular disap- 
pointment. The snow-capped ridge of Washington ought to have 
risen out of the north : the whole horizon should have been thunder- 
clouded with dark and rugged domes. But though the sky had not 
a cloud, there was nothing to be seen. Fires in the neighboring for- 
ests had thickened the air to the north with smoke, and cancelled the 
hills from the landscape as completely as if they had been annihilated. 
It was interesting, however, to see them start out by turns from their 
pall, as we rode along. First the Motes outlined themselves ; next, 
the graceful spectre of Kiarsarge peered from the golden smoke to 
keep us company ; but even when our wagon rattled into the level 
street on which North Conway is built, the same veil hid every trace 
of Mount Washington from sight. The meadows of North Conway, 
however, with their elms arching in fresh drapery, their maple groves 
not yet impenetrable by the eye with thickets of verdure, and the 
orchards, that nestled under the banks of the village, snowy with 
bloom, were more charming than in summer, — perhaps more charm- 
ing in contrast with the Day-of-Judgment atmosphere that invested 
the hills. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



139 



But in order not to lose the contrast of spring in the valleys 
with winter on the mountain crests, we drove from North Con- 7 
way by the Ellis River through J ackson to the Glen. What glorious 
sweeping lines the ridges in Jackson, half revealed to us through the 
sultry dusk of the afternoon ! The smoke was something to be grate- 
ful for, when we saw those stupendous amphitheatres, seemingly 
doubled in height, towering into gloom. After a while we could 
detect the craggy spurs of Washington outlined as a faint etching. 
And soon we seemed to be looking at the shade of the mighty mon- 
arch in an unsubstantial landscape of Hades — the phantasm of a 
mountain, like that awful Phantasm of Jupiter which Shelley, in the 
" Prometheus Unbound," called up from the shadowy world that 
mimics all that is real on the earth, 

where do inhabit 
The shadows of all forms that think and live. 



Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts; 
And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom. 

Cheerily the brooks, fed from the melting snows of the invisible sum- 
mits near us, foamed along the road-side,— their waves stained by the 
golden light, as though they were hurrying tributaries of some Pac- 
tolus. How cool the air of the forests through which the latter por- 
tion of the Pinkham road twists its way, — assuring us, as well as the 
remnants of snow-banks did, directly under the nearest trees, that 
Winter is not far off in time, and is still lingering on the neighboring 
heights ! It was a ride to call up the charming passage on Spring 
from Goethe's " Faust : "— 

Spring's warm look has unfettered the fountains, 

Brooks go tinkling with silvery feet; 

Hope's bright blossoms the valley greet; 

Weakly and sickly up the rough mountains 

Pale old Winter has made his retreat. 

Thence he launches, in sheer despite. 

Sleet and hail in impotent showers, 

O'er the green lawns as he takes his flight; 

But the sun will suffer no white, 

Everywhere waking the formative powers, 

Living colors he yearns to spread. 



140 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



And then when we ride out of the woods into the glorious Glen, we 
find the contrast for which we had made the early spring journey to 
the hills. We see the forest green up to a snow line. We stand in 
an almost tropical afternoon and look up to February. We see snow- 
fields thirty and fifty feet deep clinging in the ravines, and literally 
blazing upon the brown barrenness that relieves them. There is no 
smoke hanging around those peaks, and no suggestion of fire in those 
fortifications of the frost. Up there the summer does not come with 

thief-like step of liberal hours, 
Thawing snow-drift into flowers. 

It is almost a drawn battle between the sun and the snow-banks that 
are packed into the clefts of Tuckerman's ravine, and around the 
dome of the stubbed, square-shouldered Jefferson ; for it is not till 
the last of August that the whole of it is dislodged. But now, stand- 
ing by a brook in front of the Glen House, one may have the sense 
of Spring in the sweet, warm air, and the rustle of the young birch 
leaves that overhang the water ; and yet may see Winter by lifting 
the eye, and feel it by dipping the hand into the ice-water, into which 
that whiteness aloft is slowly dying, to be repeated in the snowy 
caps which the rocks will force upon the stream, as it goes brawling 
and dashing over them towards the Androscoggin. 

But we are travelling too fast. We should not have been tempted 
into such a smoky atmosphere for the sake of escaping from it so 
delightfully. We ought to have ridden along more leisurely by the 
Sandwich mountains, under which the earthquake force must once 
have played with dolphin-like frolic, to have rolled the central mass, 
as it did, in so many smooth and heavy domes. And then we should 
have reined up by the shore of the little lake, two or three miles off 
from the regular Conway road, to see the two Chocoruas that are 
nearer alike than the Siamese twins. One is a rocky, desolate, 
craggy-peaked substance, crouching in shape not unlike a monstrous 
walrus (though the summit suggests more the half-turned head and 



THE SACO Y ALLEY. 



141 



beak of an eagle on the watch against some danger) ; the other is the 
wraith of the proud and lonely shape above. 

How rich and sonorous that word Chocorua is ! Do not, reader, 
commit the sin of which the Yankee inhabitants are guilty, and into 
which stage-drivers will tempt you, of flattening the majestic roll and 
melancholy cadence of the word into " Corway." Does not its 
rhythm suggest the wildness and loneliness of the great hills ? To 
our ears it always brings with it the sigh of the winds through moun- 
tain pines. We have said in a former chapter that no mountain of 
New Hampshire has interested our best artists more. It is every- 
thing that a New Hampshire mountain should be. It bears the name 
of an Indian chief. It is invested with traditional and poetic interest. 
In form it is massive and symmetrical. The forests of its lower 
slopes are crowned with rock that is sculptured into a peak with 
lines full of haughty energy, in whose gorges huge shadows are en- 
trapped, and whose cliffs blaze with morning gold. And it has the 
fortune to be set in connection with lovely water scenery, — with 
Squam, and Winnipiseogee, and the little lake directly at its base. 
Its pinnacle, too, that looks so sheer and defiant, is a challenge to 
adventurous pedestrians among the mountains, which is accepted now 
and then by parties every summer. Although it is but thirty-four 
hundred feet in height, the steepness of its ledges and the absence 
of any path make the scaling of it a greater feat than a walk to the 
top of Mount Washington by any of the bridle roads. 

On one side of its jagged peak a charming lowland prospect 
stretches east and south of the Sandwich range, indented by the 
emerald shores of Winnipiseogee, which lies in queenly beauty upon 
the soft, far-stretching landscape. Pass around a huge rock to 
the other side of the steep pyramid, and you have turned to another 
chapter in the book of nature. Nothing but mountains running in 
long parallels, or bending, ridge behind ridge, are visible, here blaz- 
ing in sunlight, there gloomy with shadow, and all related to the 
towering mass of the imperial Washington. 

With the exception of Mount Adams of the Mount Washington 
21 



142 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



range, there is no peak so sharp as Chocorua. And there is no 
other summit from which the precipices are so sheer, and sweep 
down* with such cycloiclal curves. One must stand on the edge of 
the Grand Gulf, a thousand feet below the summit of Mount Wash- 
ington, to see ravine lines so full of force, and spires of rock so 
sharp and fearful. It is so related to the plains on one side, and the 
mountain gorges on the other, that no grander watchtower except 
Mount Washington can be scaled to study and enjoy cloud scenery. 
The sketch we give of the peak is copied from studies made on the 
spot. The engraving loses not only all the charm of color, but very 
much of the spirit, which belongs to the original in oil by Mr. Cole- 
man. It is possible that the accomplished artist, who has passed so 
many hours near the summit, could decide for us, out of his own 
recollections, the accuracy of this brilliant description, by an Ameri- 
can poet, of sunrise seen from such a mountain top. 

Before me rose a pinnacle of rock, 

Lifted above the wood that hemmed it in, 

And now already glowing. 



I scaled that rocky steep, and there awaited 
Silent the full appearing of the sun. 

Below there lay a far-extended sea, 
Boiling in feathery waves. The wind blew o'er it 
And tossed it round the high-ascending rocks, 
And swept it through the half-hidden forest tops, 
Till, like an ocean waking into storm, 
It heaved and weltered. Gloriously the light 
Crested its billows, and those craggy islands 
Shone on it like to palaces of spar 
Built on a sea of pearl. Far overhead, 
The sky, without a vapor or a stain, 
Intensely blue, even deepened into purple, 
Where, nearer the horizon, it received 
A tincture from the mist, that there dissolved 
Into the viewless air, — the sky bent round, 
The awful dome of a most mighty temple, 
Built by omnipotent hands for nothing less 
Than infinite worship. There I stood in silence; — 
I had no words to tell the mingled thoughts 
Of wonder and of joy that then came o'er me, 
Even with a whirlwind's rush. So beautiful, 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



148 





So bright, so glorious! Such a majesty 
In yon pure vault! So many dazzling tints 
In yonder waste of waves — so like the ocean 
21* 



144 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



With its unnumbered islands there encircled 
By foaming surges, that the mounting eagle, 
Lifting his fearless pinion through the clouds 
To bathe in purest sunbeams, seemed an ospray 
Hovering above his prey; and yon tall pines, 
Their tops half mantled in a snowy veil, 
A frigate with full canvas, bearing on 
To conquest and to glory. But even these 
Had round them something of the lofty air 
In which they moved; not like to things ol earth. 
But heightened, and made glorious, as became 
Such pomp and splendor. 

Who can tell the brightness 
That every moment caught a newer glow, 
That circle, with its centre like the heart 
Of elemental fire, and spreading out 
In floods of liquid gold on the blue sky 
And on the opaline waves, crowned with a rainbow 
Bright as the arch that bent above the throne 
Seen in a vision by the holy man 
In Patmos! who can tell how it ascended, 
And flowed more widely o'er that lifted ocean 
Till instantly the unobstructed sun 
Kolled up his sphere of fire, floating away, — 
Away in a pure ether, far from earth, 
And all its clouds, — and pouring forth unbounded 
His arrowy brightness ! From that burning centre 
At once there ran along the level line 
Of that imagined sea a stream of gold, — 
Liquid and flowing gold, that seemed to tremble 
Even with a furnace heat, — on to the point 
Whereon I stood. At once that sea of vapor 
Parted away, and, melting into air, 
Kose round me; and I stood involved in light, 
As if a flame had kindled up, and wrapped me 
In its innocuous blaze. Away it rolled, 
Wave after wave. They climbed the highest rocks, 
Poured over them in surges, and then rushed 
Down glens and valleys, like a wintry torrent 
Dashed instant to the plain. It seemed a moment, 
And they were gone, as if the touch of fire 
At once dissolved them. Then I found myself 
Midway in air; ridge after ridge below 
Descended, with their opulence of woods, 
Even to the dim-seen level, where a lake 
Flashed in the sun, and from it wound a line, 
Now silvery bright, even to the farthest verge 
Of the encircling hills. A waste of rocks 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



145 



Was round me, — but below, how beautiful, 
How rich the plain! a wilderness of groves 
And ripening harvests ; while the sky of June, 
The soft blue sky of June, and the cool air, 
That makes it then a luxury to live, 
Only to breathe it, and the busy echo 
Of cascades, and the voice of mountain brooks, 
Stole with such gentle meanings to my heart, 
That where I stood seemed heaven. 

And Chocorua is the only mountain whose peak is crowned with a 
legend. Would that the vigorous pen which has saved for us many 
of the fragmentary traditions of the early Indian life in New England, 
and set them to the music of such terse and vigorous lines as " The 
Bridal of Pennacook," " Mogg Megone," and "The Funeral Tree 
of the Sokokis," had enshrined thus the story of Chocorua's Curse, 
and in this way given the mountain added glory in the landscape 
of New Hampshire ! Mr. Whittier has not told it in verse ; but 
our readers will be glad that we can give it to them in such vivid 
prose as the following, by Mrs. Child : — 

" A small colony of hardy pioneers had settled at the base of this 
mountain. Intelligent, independent men, impatient of restraint, they 
had shunned the more thickly-settled portions of the country, and 
retired into this remote part of New Hampshire. But there was one 
master-spirit among them who was capable of a higher destiny than 
he ever fulfilled. 

" The consciousness of this had stamped something of proud humil- 
ity on the face of Cornelius Campbell, — something of a haughty 
spirit, strongly curbed by circumstances he could not control, and at 
which he seemed to murmur. He assumed no superiority ; but, 
unconsciously, he threw around him the spell of intellect, and his 
companions felt, they knevf not why, that he was ' among them, but 
not of them.' His stature was gigantic, and he had the bold, quick 
tread of one who had wandered frequently and fearlessly among the 
terrible hiding-places of nature. His voice was harsh, but his whole 
countenance possessed singular capabilities for tenderness of expres- 
sion ; and sometimes, under the gentle influence of domestic excite- 



146 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



ment, his hard features would be rapidly lighted up, seeming like the 
sunshine flying over the shaded fields in an April day. 

" His companion was one calculated to excite and retain the 
deep, strong energies of manly love. She had possessed extraordi- 
nary beauty, and had, in the full maturity of an excellent judgment, 
relinquished several splendid alliances, and incurred her father's 
displeasure, for the sake of Cornelius Campbell. Had political cir- 
cumstances proved favorable, his talents and ambition would unques- 
tionably have worked out a path to emolument and fame ; but he 
had been a zealous and active enemy of the Stuarts, and the restora- 
tion of Charles II. was the death-warrant of his hopes. Immedi- 
ately flight became necessary, and America was the chosen place of 
refuge. His adherence to Cromwell's party was not occasioned by 
religious sympathy, but by political views too liberal and philosophical 
for the state of the people ; therefore, Cornelius Campbell sought a 
home with our forefathers, and, being of a proud nature, he withdrew 
with his family to the solitary place we have mentioned. 

" A very small settlement in such a remote place was, of course, 
subject to inconvenience and occasional suffering. From the Indians 
they received neither injury nor insult. No cause of quarrel had 
ever arisen ; and, although their frequent visits were sometimes 
troublesome, they never had given indications of jealousy or malice. 
Chocorua was a prophet among them, and, as such, an object of 
peculiar respect. He had a mind which education and motive would 
have nerved with giant strength ; but, growing up in savage free- 
dom, it wasted itself in dark, fierce, ungovernable passions. There 
was something fearful in the quiet haughtiness of his lips ; it seemed 
so like slumbering power — too proud to be lightly roused, and too 
implacable to sleep again. In his small, black, fiery eye, expression 
lay coiled up like a beautiful snake. The white people knew that his 
hatred would be terrible ; but they had never provoked it, and even 
the children became too much accustomed to him to fear him. 

" Chocorua had a son, nine or ten years old, to whom Caroline 
Campbell had occasionally made such gaudy presents as were likely 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



to attract his savage fancy. This won the child's affections, so that 
he became a familiar visitant, almost an inmate of their dwelling ; 
and, being unrestrained by the courtesies of civilized life, he would 
inspect everything, and taste of everything which came in his way. 
Some poison, prepared for a mischievous fox, which had long troubled 
the little settlement, was discovered and drunk by the Indian boy, 
and he went home to his father to sicken and die. From that mo- 
ment jealousy and hatred took possession of Chocorua's soul. He 
never told his suspicions ; he brooded over them in secret, to nourish 
the deadly revenge he contemplated against Cornelius Campbell. 

" The story of Indian animosity is always the same. Cornelius 
Campbell left his hut for the fields early one bright, balmy morning 
in June. Still a lover, though ten years a husband, his last look was 
turned towards his wife, answering her parting smile ; his last action 
a kiss for each of his children. When he returned to dinner, they 
were dead — all dead ! and their disfigured bodies too cruelly showed 
that an Indian's hand had done the work ! 

" In such a mind grief, like all other emotions, was tempestuous. 
Home had been to him the only verdant spot in the desert of fife. 
In his wife and children he had garnered up all his heart ; and now 
that they were torn from him, the remembrance of their love clung 
to him like the death-grapple of a drowning man, sinking him down 
into darkness and death. This was followed by a calm a thousand 
times more terrible — the creeping agony of despair, that brings with 
it no power of resistance. 

'It was as if the dead could feel 
The icy worm around him steal.' 

" Such, for many days, was the state of Cornelius Campbell. 
Those who knew and reverenced him feared that the spark of reason 
was forever extinguished. But it rekindled again, and with it came 
a wild, demoniac spirit of revenge. The death-groan of Chocorua 
would make him smile in his dreams ; and, when he waked, death 
seemed too pitiful a vengeance for the anguish that was eating into 
his very soul. 



148 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



" Chocorua's brethren were absent on a hunting expedition at the 
time he committed the murder, and those who watched his move- 
ments observed that he frequently climbed the high precipice, which 
afterwards took his name, probably looking out for indications of their 
return. Here Cornelius Campbell resolved to effect his deadly pur- 
pose. A party was formed, under his guidance, to cut off all chance 
of retreat, and the dark-minded prophet was to be hunted like a wild 
beast to his lair. 

" The morning sun had scarce cleared away the fogs, when Cho- 
corua started at a loud voice from beneath the precipice, commanding 
him to throw himself into the deep abyss below. He knew the voice 
of his enemy, and replied, with an Indian's calmness, ' The Great 
Spirit gave life to Chocorua, and Chocorua will not throw it away at 
the command of the white man.' 4 Then hear the Great Spirit speak 
in the white man's thunder ! ' exclaimed Cornelius Campbell, as he 
pointed his gun to the precipice. Chocorua, though fierce and fear- 
less as a panther, had never overcome his dread of fire-arms. He 
placed his hands upon his ears, to shut out the stunning report ; the 
next moment the blood bubbled from his neck, and he reeled fearfully 
on the edge of the precipice. But he recovered himself, and, raising 
himself on his hand, he spoke in a loud voice, that grew more terrific 
as its huskiness increased, 4 A curse upon ye, white men ! May the 
Great Spirit curse ye when he speaks in the clouds, and his words 
are fire ! Chocorua had a son, and ye killed him while the sky looked 
bright ! Lightning blast your crops ! Winds and fire destroy your 
dwellings ! The Evil Spirit breathe death upon your cattle ! Your 
graves lie in the war-path of the Indian ! Panthers howl and wolves 
fatten over your bones ! Chocorua goes to the Great Spirit, — his 
curse stays with the white man ! ' 

" The prophet sank upon the ground, still uttering inaudible curses, 
and they left his bones to whiten in the sun. But his curse rested on 
that settlement. The tomahawk and scalping-knife were busy among 
them ; the winds tore up trees, and hurled them at their dwellings ; 
their crops were blasted, their cattle died, and sickness came upon 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



149 



their strongest men. At last the remnant of them departed from the 
fatal spot to mingle with more populous and prosperous colonies. 
Cornelius Campbell became a hermit, seldom seeking or seeing his 
fellow-men ; and two years after he was found dead in his hut." 

During many years the cattle in the town of Burton, now called 
Albany, at the base of Chocorua, were afflicted with a strange 
disease. Science has discovered that the trouble is in the water, 
which contains a weak solution of muriate of lime. The disease 
of the cattle was for years attributed to Chocorua' s dying curse. 
Whether that curse sank into the mountain and poisoned with mu- 
riate of lime the springs from which the Burton cows were to drink, 
or the muriate of lime at the base generated the story of the sachem's 
imprecation on the summit, let us not too curiously inquire. Let us 
only recall the fact with gratitude that, since science has provided a 
remedy for the suffering cattle in common soap-suds, the superstitious 
dread has nearly disappeared. Some charming cultivated intervales 
in the village of Albany now add to the beauty of the prospect from 
the battered crest of the mountain, and intimate, either that the 
sachem's wrongs have been expiated, or that his dusky spirit is 
appeased. 

NORTH CONWAY. 

But now let us listen to an appeal of seductive cadence in music 
of a gentler key. 

Come down, maid, from yonder mountain height; 
What pleasure lives in height, (the shepherd sang,) 
In height and cold, the splendor of the hills ? 
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease 
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine, 
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; 
And come, for Love is of the valley, come, 
For Love is of the valley, come thou down 
And find him; by the happy threshold, he, 
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize, 
Or red with spirted purple of the vats, 
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk 
22 



150 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



With Death and Morning on the Silver Horns, 

Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, 

Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, 

That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls 

To roll the torrent out of dusky doors : 

But follow; let the torrent dance thee down 

To find him in the valley; let the wild 

Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave 

The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill 

Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, 

That like a broken purpose waste in air; 

So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales 

Await thee ; azure pillars of the hearth 

Arise to thee; the children call, and I 

Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, 

Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; 

Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn, 

The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 

And murmuring of innumerable bees. 

Such is the invitation with which North Conway coaxes us from 
the gaunt and grizzly peak which peers over one of its south-westerly 
wans. It is a short task to give the topographical dimensions and to 
describe the mountain framing of this village. We can easily say 
that it is a level bank about thirty feet above the channel and the 
meadows of the Saco River, extending some four or five miles, 
and measuring, perhaps, three miles in breadth. On the west, the 
long and noble Mote Mountain .guards it ; on the east, the rough, 
less lofty, and bending Rattlesnake ridge helps to wall it in, — unat- 
tractive enough in the ordinary daylight, but a great favorite of the 
setting sun which loves to glorify it with Tyrian drapery. On the 
south-west, as we have said, Chocorua manages to get a peep of one 
corner of its lovely meadows. Almost the whole line of the White 
Mountains proper, crowned in the centre by the dome of Mount 
Washington, closes the view on the north-west and north, — only 
some twelve or fifteen miles distant by the air. And nearer, on the 
north-east, its base but two miles distant, swells the symmetrical 
Kiarsarge, the queenly mountain of New Hampshire, which, when 
the Indian titles were expunged from the great range, should have 
been christened " Martha Washington." The true Indian name of 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



151 



this charming pyramid is Pequawket. And far to the south, the 
hills " soften away in a series of smaller and smaller darkening 
mounds or humps, that answer to the description of the sea-serpent's 
back." 

But what suggestion of the exquisite loveliness of the village is 
given by the most accurate report of its meadow farms and mountain 
guards ? We well remember driving into it from the north, by the 
Jackson road, some three years since, about sunset, under waving 
hangings of vermilion and gold. The sinking sunlight was shedding 
yellow splendor over the meadows, tinging the higher edges of the 
azure mists that settle in the ravines of Mount Washington with ten- 
der rose-color, and flooding the upper half of the Rattlesnake ridge 
with purple, sharply ruled from a basis of deep bronze green. Our 
wagon was stopped on the borders of the bank, about three miles north 
of the centre of the village, on the edge of Bartlett, where the mead- 
ows look most fascinating ; and one of our party, who was thus for 
the first time introduced to the quiet and the luxuriant loveliness of 
this village, said, " I did not suppose that there was on the earth a 
landscape so exquisite as this." The only other comment that was 
made, while the sun was setting, was the quotation of the lines from 
Wordsworth, — 

full many a spot 
Of hidden beauty have I chanced to espy 
Among the mountains; never one like this; 
So lonesome, and so perfectly secure; 
Not melancholy — no, for it is green, 
And bright, and fertile, furnished in itself 
With the few needful things that life requires. 
In rugged arms how softly does it lie, 
How tenderly protected! Far and near 
We have an image of the pristine earth, 
The planet in its nakedness; were this 
Man's only dwelling, sole appointed seat, 
First, last, and single, in the breathing world, 
It could not be more quiet; peace is here 
Or nowhere; days unruffled by the gale 
Of public news, or private ; years that pass 
Forgetfully; uncalled upon to pay 
The common penalties of mortal life, 
Sickness, or accident, or grief, or pain. 
22* 



152 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



One always finds, we think, on a return to North Conway, that his 
recollections of its loveliness were inadequate to the reality. Such 
profuse and calm beauty sometimes reigns over the whole village, that 
it seems to be a little quotation from Arcadia, or a suburb of Para- 
dise. Who can tell how it is that the trees here seem of more 
aristocratic elegance, — that the shadows are more delicately pen- 
cilled, — that the curves of the brooks are more seductive than 
elsewhere ? Why do the nights seem more tender and less solemn ? 
What has touched the ledgy rocks with a grace that softens 
the impression of sublimity and age ? What has made the " twi- 
light parks " of pine dim with a pensive rather than a melancholy 
dusk ? 

Certainly, we have seen no other region of New England that is 
so swathed in dreamy charm. A few years ago, the Mote Mountains 
were ravaged with fire ; and yet their lines give such delight, that 
few mountains look so attractive in verdure as they in desolation. 
The atmosphere and the outlines of the hills seem to lull rather than 
stimulate. There are no crags, no pinnacles, no ramparts of rock, no 
mountain frown, or savageness brought into contrast, at any point, with 
the general serene beauty. Kiarsarge is a rough and scraggy moun- 
tain when you attempt to climb it ; but its lines ripple off softly to the 
plain. Mount Washington does not seem so much to stand up, as to 
lie out at ease across the north. The leonine grandeur is there, but 
it is the lion not erect, but couchant, a little sleepy, stretching out 
his paws and enjoying the sun. And tired Chocorua appears as if 
looking wistfully down into 

a land 

In which it seemed always afternoon. 

Indeed there is no place in New England which better fits one to 
read and enjoy Tennyson's Lotus-Eaters. The lines of the land- 
scape have something of the luscious delay and lingering undulation 
which the poem has. 

There is sweet music here that softer falls 
Than petals from blown roses on the grass, 



THE SACO VALLEY 153 

Or night-dews on still waters between walls 

Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; 

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies 

Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes; 
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. 

Here are cool mosses deep, 

And through the moss the ivies creep, 

And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, 
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. 




And then the sunsets of North Conway ! Coleridge asked Mont 
Blanc if he had " a charm to stay the morning star m his steep 
course." It is time for some poet to put the question to those 
bewitching elm-sprinkled acres that border the Saco, by what sorcery 



154 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



they evoke, evening after evening, upon the heavens that watch them, 
such lavish and Italian bloom. Nay it is not Italian, for the basis of 
its beauty is pure blue, and the skies of Italy are not nearly so blue 
as those of New England. One sees more clear sky in eight summer 
weeks in Conway, probably, than in the compass of an Italian year. 
The air of Italy is more opalescent, and seems to hold the light in 
luscious repose, and yet a little unsteady in tint. But for pomp of 
bright, clear, contrasted flames on a deep and transparent sky, the 
visitors of North Conway, on the sunset bank that overlooks the 
meadows, enjoy the frequent privilege of a spectacle which the sun 
sinking behind the Notch conjures for them, such as he rarely dis- 
plays to the dwellers by the Arno or the inhabitants of Naples. How 
often have we seen such shows from that bank, while the evening 
song of birds came up from the near orchards and the distant maple- 
groves of the meadows below, as it seemed too wasteful in Nature to 
have prepared for the fading canopy of one small village and of one 
summer evening ! Then was the time for the miracle of Joshua — for 
some artist-priest, like Turner, to bid the sun stand still, that such 
gorgeousness might be a garniture of more than a few rapid moments 
upon the cloud-flecked pavilion of the air. And as the brightness 
burned off from the hills behhid, and the hastening fire mounted from 
the lower clouds to stain the cirrus, and the west began to glow with 
the upcast beams of the sunken sun, one could not but feel the aspira- 
tion connected with the fleeting magnificence of sunset, which is not 
the least marvellous passage of Goethe's Faust. We are indebted for 
the translation to the kindness of a friend, whose knowledge of Ger- 
man is equalled only by his artistic command of English, and who 
has given a full equivalent of the original in rhythm and grace. 

He yields, he vanishes, the day is gone, 
Yonder he speeds, and sheds new life forever. 
O ! had I wings to rise and follow on 
Still after him with fond endeavor! 
Then should I see beneath my feet 
The still world's everlasting vesper, 

Each summit tipp'd with fire, each valley's silence sweet. 
The silver brook, the river's molten jasper. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



155 



And nought should stay my God-competing flight, 

Though savage mountains now with all their ravines, 

And now the ocean with its tempered havens, 

Successive greet the astonished sight. 

The God at length appears as he were sinking; 

But still the impulse is renewed, 

I hasten on, the light eternal drinking, 

The day pursuing, by the night pursued, 

The heavens above, and under me the billows. 

A pleasant dream! Meanwhile the sun has fled. 

In vain, alas! the spirit's wings are spread, 

Never will bodily wings appear as fellows. 

Of course it must not be understood that North Conway is always 
thus beautiful. The sunshine, even when the days are clear, some- 
times produces only journey-work. Besides the prismatic beams and 
the actinic ray, there is the artistic quality in the light which, at 
times, refuses to leave its fountains, and the scene is prosaic. Now 
and then the Saco, swelled by the bounty of a score of mountain 
heights, overflows its bed, sweeps the whole surface of the intervale, 
and mounts to the very edge of the bank on which the village is built. 
We cannot prophesy these baptisms. So we cannot tell when the 
spiritual heights from which Nature issues will unseal their opulence, 
and send the freshet of bloom, — when the " finer light in light" will 
break its bounds and give us 

one of the charmed days 
When the genius of God doth flow, 

and the whole valley will turn into a goblet, brimming with beauty 
too liberal to be contained by the mountain walls that are tinted with 
its weird waves. By hurrying through the mountains, we may lose 
the luxury and revelations of one of these ineffable atmospheres, when 
Italy and New England seem interfused, and the light is a compound 
of molten diamond and opal. 

In his drawing of North Conway, too, our artist has softened and 
improved the village portion of its physiognomy. One cannot help 
being struck with its capacity of improvement. If some duke, or 
merchant-prince with unlimited income, could put the resources of 
landscape taste upon it, adorn it with cottages, hedge the farms upon 



156 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



the meadows, span the road with elms, cultivate the border-hills as 
far up as there is good soil, the village might be made as lovely a 
spot as it would be possible to combine out of the elements of New 
England scenery. The beauty of the place may be measured by the 
fact, that, when it was first sought for summer boarding or residence, 
people seldom noticed the inversion of taste winch was shown in the 
arrangement of the houses and grounds. The barns in the most 
sightly places, the ugly fences on the intervale, the sandy banks that 
begged for sods to prevent them from fretting and heating the eyes, 
which on a sultry day turn towards the cool verdure below, were 
drowned out of offending prominence by the overpowering loveliness 
that enveloped them. 

One can hardly conceive what heightened charm a very little cul- 
tivation on the sides of a mountain will add to the landscape. Mr. 
Emerson has interpreted the friendship of Nature for human art, in 
those lines that sing themselves now through the whole cultivated 
mind of our country : — 

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon 
As the best gem upon her zone; 
And Morning opes with haste her lids, 
To gaze upon the Pyramids; 
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky 
As on its friends a kindred eye; 
For out of Thought's interior sphere, 
These wonders rose to upper air; 
And Nature gladly gave them place, 
Adopted them into her race, 
And granted them an equal date 
With Andes and with Ararat. 

We have seen a common rye-field of some fifty acres on the slope of 
Mount Moriah, in the Androscoggin Yalley, which made a visit to the 
village of Grorham a greater delight, by the addition of its strong and 
lively green to the drapery of the mountain, and the exquisite con- 
trast, at evening, of its gold with the tender purple of the forests 
above. Nature had plainly been longing for the necessity of the 
agriculture that would bind a new sheaf for her harvest of hues, and 



THE SACO VALLEY. 157 

suggest how the monotonous mountain robe might be changed for the 
brocade of art. This change has commenced in North Conway. 1 
Tasteful residences have already begun to sprinkle the village ; and 
although we may not live to see Kiarsarge draped with farms, or 
the desolation of the Mote Mountain blossom as the rose, it is possible 
that the general charm of the " Invitation " which one of our OA\n 
poets, who is a faithful lover of North Conway, has inwoven with his 
verse, may yet in our lifetime be added to the natural enticements of 
the landscape : — 

The warm wide hills are muffled thick with green, 
And fluttering swallows fill the air with song. 
Come to our cottage-home. Lowly it stands, 
Set in a vale of flowers, deep fringed with grass. 
The sweetbrier (noiseless herald of the place) 
Flies with its odor, meeting all who roam 
With welcome footsteps to our small abode. 
No splendid cares live here — no barren shows. 
The bee makes harbor at our perfumed door, 
And hums all day his breezy note of joy. 

Come, my friend! and share our festal month, 
And while the west wind walks the leafy woods, 
While orchard-blooms are white in all the lanes, 
And brooks make music in the deep, cool dells, 
Enjoy the golden moments as they pass, 
And gain new strength for days that are to come. 

When the time comes that this poetry by Fields shall be the type of 
the cultivation in the village, North Conway will be lifted out of the 
New Hampshire county in which it is taxed, and be the adytum of a 
temple where God is to be worshipped as the Infinite Artist, in joy. 

We may catch a glimpse of the life which the scenery of the vil- 
lage was created to enclose, through an extract from a letter which 
once enriched the columns of the Boston " Journal of Music." Of 
course it is from the pen of the accomplished editor, whose fine sense 
for natural beauty is in chord with his cultured appreciation of the 
most spiritual of the arts. " Sit down with us upon the door-step 
here of our friend's hospitable summer home, just as the sun of a 
most gorgeous day goes down behind the long level ridge of the 

23 



158 THE WHITE HILLS. 

superb Mote Mountain, that bounds the scene before us, its -wooded 
wall upreared as for the walk of some angel sentinel that shall keep 
holy watch and ward all night over the lovely mountain-girded scene. 
A little later, one may almost fancy he perceives the sheen of the 




colossal armor gleaming up there in the starlight! Now the sun 
sends mingled light and lengthened shadows over the picturesque 
labors of the haymakers, in the broad, green, beautiful meadows that- 
spread, a mile wide, waving with grass and grain and patches of 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



159 



glistening corn, clear to the mountain's feet, to the hieroglyphic, 
rocky faces of the curious ledges, that form its outposts in front, and 
to the winding Saco River, whose course is marked with gracefully 
overhanging elms and oaks and maples, that also stud the plain in 
scattered groups, and shade the brooks that ramble, musically gurg- 
ling, to the river. A lovelier plain was never spread before a poet's 
feet, to woo the willing thoughts abroad. A scene of plenty, purity, 
and peace. On our right, in the north, loom the White Mountains, 
blue and misty and yet boldly outlined. There is Mount Washington, 
rearing his broad Jove-like throne amid his great brothers and sup- 
porters ; these, with innumerable lesser mountains, (each Olympian 
enough when clouds cap and conceal the grander ones behind them,) 
gaze solemnly and serenely down our broad valley, and look new 
meanings in the ceaseless changes of the air and light. 

" In the forenoon, when every leaf and blade of grass was stirring 
before the strong, purifying west wind, and when all this motion 
strangely contrasted with the clear still blue sky above, and with the 
* exquisitely white fleecy clouds that rested on the summits of Mount 
Washington and of his lower neighbors, we strolled away over the 
meadows alone. It was a magnificent scene ; the tall ripe grass, the 
corn and oats and bearded barley, bending and tossing in the wind 
about us, and running in incessant waves, which it was an inexhaus- 
tible delight to watch, and try to seize the outline of the law of such 
infinitely varied and yet unitary motion. It was Nature's best type 
of the Fugue in music ; the same perpetual pursuit and tendency of 
many to one end, yet never ending. 

" Our friend's house, which is just back from the road by which 
the crowded stage-loads of scenery seekers pass through the Notch 
of the White Mountains, stands on a raised plateau that rims the 
meadow foresaid ; and here now, on the door-step sit we in the cool 
of the evening, filling sight and soul with all this beauty. The sun 
has gone down, and the new moon has lifted her pure silvery cres- 
cent from behind the Mote. We gaze upon it through the leafy 



160 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



arches of three tall, stately elms, that stand on guard upon the road- 
side just before the house. The world without makes music to the 
world within ; the outward scene is like a glowing reflex of the soul's 
ideal and harmonious moods. Nature and conscious life are one. It 
seems just the spot where one — with fitting company — might realize 
a perfectly artistic life. Poetry might bathe her visionary eyes in 
ever new and quickening light, and choose her language out of the 
words which God's finger has traced in innumerable forms and types 
of beauty and of meaning all around her. Philosophy might medi- 
tate the problems of life and eternity, with every report of the five 
outward senses loyally conspiring, not disturbing. Art might illus- 
trate and complete all with a human meaning, and realize the pictures 
and the statues and the noble edifices which it sees hinted in the 
landscape. For one, we would contribute far more readily, extrava- 
gant as it might be, to some colossal marble statue or architectural 
pile, that should cast its shadow yonder from the ridge of the Mote 
Mountain, than to that civilized absurdity of the Washington monu- 
ment scheme at the Capitol. Music, of the rarest, highest, most 
artistic, would sound as fitting and as truly horae-like here, as do the 
native birds and waterfalls. And worship finds a solemn, heaven- 
suggesting altar in each mountain height. 

" What music-lover has not often longed that he might hear the fine 
strains of the masters in the summer, in the open air, amid nature's 
free and grand surroundings, and not be doomed to know such chiefly 
in the ungrateful artificial limits of the concert room, with gas light 
and unsympathetic crowds. Here, by a rare luck, we taste this 
pleasure, this doubly perfect harmony. A piano, almost a rarer 
wonder here to simple villagers than the first locomotive, has but this 
day arrived, nor are there wanting cunning fingers to woo forth its 
music ; and as our eyes range the meadows and the mountains, deli- 
cate strains of Chopin, notturnes, preludes, and mazourkas, steal from 
the house and float like the voice of our own soul's selectest, inmost 
thoughts and feelings over the whole scene. And hark ! now sister 
voices blend : the angel trio from ' Elijah,' Lift thine eyes ! Were 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



161 



we not already lifting them, and to the mountains ? And melodies 
of Eobert Franz, [Nun die Schatten dunkeln, &c.,) as fresh and gen- 
uine and full of soul, and free from hacknied commonplace, as if they 
had been born among these mountains, sing to us and sing for us, and 
bridge over that awkward chasm of conscious dumbness, which some- 
times so painfully separates us from the life and soul of that outward 
beauty which seems to challenge us for something corresponding on 
our part. The fairest landscape dies and turns cold before us, and 
looks ghost-like and unreal, often, as the moon pales before the sun, 
for the want of something more than nature, such as friends, or Art, 
or intellectual study, or true worship, or some creative action or ex- 
pression on our own part, which shall meet Nature half way and fulfil 
the purpose of her invitation. Such is Music to our idle group (and 
yet how richly occupied) beneath the moon and stars here this sweet 
evening." 

After some hours kindred in artistic privilege with those which our 
friend has thus described, it was our fortune, in returning under a 
dark sky to the hotel, to see a remarkable exhibition over the North 
Conway meadows, produced by a very humble cause. The hot even- 
ing had brought out the fire-flies by the acre over the intervale ; and 
looking down and off from the banks, forty feet in the dusk, while the 
bottom was invisible, it was a grander spectacle than we can describe, 
to see two or three miles of darkness sparkling with winged stars. It 
required but little fancy to catch the outline of mimic constellations — 
momentary Dippers, ephemeral Pleiades, evanescent parodies in the 
insect phosphorus of colossal Orion with his club of suns. And let 
us not think that the boundless and persistent splendor of the skies is 
insulted by this comparison. For let us remember that, to the in- 
seeing eye, the Infinite Art is shown no less in the veining of insect 
wings, and that vital energy which shed those twinkles of a second 
over the evening fields, than in the whirl of the monstrous balls that 
sprinkle light through the deeps of a firmament, and which, in the 
measure of His large purposes, may be only flickers of a moment on 
a larger tract of gloom. Is it not written, " All of them shall wax 



162 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



old like a garment ; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they 
shall be changed " ? 

" There's nothing great 
Nor small," has said a poet of our day, 
(Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve 
And not be thrown out by the matin's bell ) 
And truly, I reiterate, . . . nothing's small! 
No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee, 
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars; 
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere; 
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim: 
And, — glancing on my own thin, veindd wrist, — 
In such a little tremor of the blood 
The Avhole strong clamor of a vehement soul 
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God: 
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes. 

If now, turning in another direction, we seek to explain the differ- 
ence in charm between North Conway and other villages of the moun- 
tains, we must bear in mind that there is the same difference between 
scenes in nature, that there is between words when put together at 
random and words arranged in sentences. Ordinarily, hills and 
streams, trees and fields, convey by their arrangement no definite 
impression, and hold attention by no intellectual charm. They sim- 
ply supply the scattered vocabulary of fine and flash, tint and form, 
by means of which the artist rewrites his symmetrical thought. 
Truth, for the purposes and order of science, is furnished by one tree 
as well as another ; by a stream, whether it leap in musical cascade 
or flow calmly to the sea ; by the mountain, regardless of the slope 
of its wall, or the shape of its crest. But for purposes of art and 
artistic joy, the disposition and proportion of materials are all im- 
portant ; for thus only is land lifted into landscape. It is pleasant to 
find in any scene one or two instances of combination — rock with 
stream, meadow and hill, dip and cone — that will satisfy the eye, and 
offer a sentence or a rhyme of the omnipresent Artist. It is delight- 
ful when we find a paragraph or a long passage, that obeys the gram- 
mar of beauty, and prints a rounded conception of the Creator. Then 
the day is too short for the ever-renewing joy of vision. The distinc- 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



163 



fcion of North Conway is, that it is a large natural poem in landscape. 
Up to the limit where art can come in as improvement, it is finished 
by the natural forces with a fine pencil. Every arc of the circle 
which the eye breaks off by a direct gaze, — from the scarred gorges 
of the range that closes the view on the northwest, to the cheerful 
openness of the southerly outlook, — is a picture ready for the can- 
vas, having definite sense, sentiment, and rhythm. When one enters 
it, it is the opening of a volume of divine verse, with strophe and 
antistrophe of mountain majesty, with eclogues, and idyls, and son- 
nets, and lyrics, wrought out of meadows and groves, and secluded 
nooks and leaping streams. 

It would require more space than our volume will allow, to do jus- 
tice to the various charms into which this wide circle of beauty is 
broken by walks and excursions and drives. One of the prominent 
pleasures of a clear and cool day is to find different points for study- 
ing Mount Washington. In what novelties of shape, dignity and 
effect he may be thrown by the rambles of a mornmg ! We may see 
his steep, torn walls rising far off beyond a hill which we are ascend- 
ing, and which hides from us most of the foreground in the village 
and the base on which the mountain stands ; or may catch a glimpse 
of him through a couple of trees that stand sentinel to keep other 
mountains of the range from an intrusion that will reduce his majesty ; 
or may seek a position over a grove whose breezy plumes afford the 
most cheerful contrast of motion and color to set off his gray gran- 
deur and majestic rest ; or from different points near the Saco may 
relate him, by changing angles, into fresh combinations with the 
level verdure of the meadows, or with some curve of its brooks, or 
some graceful thicket of its maples. Such a walk upon the meadows 
over its roughnesses, its occasional rods of marsh, its ditch here and 
there, useful to the farmer but not delightful to feet in search of the 
picturesque, its rickety fences to be climbed, — and all for the sake of 
catching a new attitude, or a new expression of the monarch hill of 
New England, certainly tempts one who is familiar with Stirling's 
poems to repeat to himself the lines — 



164 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



1 looked upon a plain of green, 

That some one called the Land of Prose, 

Where many living things are seen, 
In movement or repose. 

I looked upon a stately hill 

That well was named the Mount of Song, 

Where golden shadows wait at will 
The woods and streams among. 

But most this fact my wonder bred, 

Though known by all the nobly wise, 
It was the mountain streams that fed 

The fair green plain's amenities. 

But let us remember that a climbing of Mount Washington, along 
the very track of those delicate dimples and golden-edged shadows, 
would make it seem intensely enough the " Land of Prose," while 
the poetry and the gold would have floated off upon the meadow, 
to efface all sus;o;estion of ditches and marsh, and make it one 

oo 7 

strip of shaven and fascinating lawn. And we need not go so far as 
the nearest outwork of the White Mountain wall to see this poetry, 
which the lowlands always refer to the mountains, flung back again. 
The sunset bank, near the Kiarsarge House in the centre of Conway 
village, or still better, the roadside, near the little Methodist church 
on the edge of Bartlett, opens the meadow in such loveliness, that 
one might believe he was looking through an air that had never 
enwrapped any sin, upon a floor of some nook of the primitive Eden. 
What more appropriate reverence can we pay to this intervale, be- 
yond all question, as seen from the point last mentioned, the most 
entrancing piece of meadow which New England mountains guard, 
or upon which the setting sun lavishes his gold, than to connect with 
it Mr. Ruskin's analysis of the beauty and apostrophe to the uses of 
the grass ? 

" Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute, quietly, 
its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems 
there, of notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength, and a 
very little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a point, — 
not a perfect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a 



THE SACO VALLEY 



165 



creditable or apparently much cared for example of Nature's work- 
manship ; made, as it seems, only to be trodden on to-day and to- 
morrow to be cast into the oven ; and a little pale and hollow stalk, 
feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. 
And yet, think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous 
flowers that beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, 
pleasant to the eyes and good for food, — stately palm and pine, strong- 




ash and oak, scented citron, burdened vine, — there be any by man so 
deeply loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble 

green 

" Consider what we owe merely to the meadow grass, to the cover- 
ing of the dark ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies of 
those soft, and countless and peaceful spears. The fields ! Follow 
but forth for a little time the thoughts of all that we ought to recog- 

24 



166 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



nize in those words. All spring and summer is in them, — tne walks 
by silent scented paths, — the rests in noonday heat, — the joy of herds 
and flocks, — the power of all shepherd life and meditation, — the life 
of sunlight upon the world, falling in emerald streaks, and failing in 
soft blue shadows, where else it would have struck upon the dark 
mould, or scorching dust, — pictures beside the pacing brooks, — soft 
banks and knolls of lowly hills, — thymy slopes of down overlooked 
by the blue line of lifted sea, — crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or 
smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, 
and softening in their fall the sound of loving voices ; all these are 
summed in those simple words ; and these are not all. We may not 
measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in our own land ; 
though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweet- 
ness, Shakespeare's peculiar joy, would open on us more and more, yet 
we have it but in part. Go out in the spring time, among the meadows 
that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their 
lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians and the 
white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free ; and as you follow 
the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and 
dim with blossom, — paths that forever droop and rise over the green 
banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep to the 
blue water, studded here and there with new-mown heaps, filling all 
the air with fainter sweetness, — look up towards the higher hills, 
where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets 
among the shadows of the pines ; and we may, perhaps, at last know 
the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, " He maketh 
grass to grow upon the mountains." 

One of the favorite excursions of those who remain long in North 
Conway is to the " Ledges," Thompson's Falls, and Echo Lake, on 
the other side of the Saco, the extreme distance being only some 
three miles. The Falls flow down a spur of the Mote Mountain, just 
in the rear of the lower Ledge. The loose rocks are thrown about in 
such complete confusion that it strikes the eye, fresh from the finished 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



167 



landscape around the meadows, as a patch of chaos too obstinate to 
be organized into the general Cosmos. The highest of the Ledges, 
which are bold, broad granite bluffs, rises about nine hundred and 
sixty feet above the Saco. The river must be forded twice to reach 
them, which adds greatly to the charm of the excursion. The lower 
Ledge is almost perpendicular, and the jagged face of the rock, richly 
weather-stained, reminds one of the Saguenay Cliffs, which it strongly 
resembles also in the impression it makes by its soaring gloom. An 
easy climb of a hundred feet carries one to a singular cavity in this 
Ledge, which visitors have named " The Cathedral." And truly the 
waters, frosts and storms that scooped and grooved its curves and 
niches, seemed to have combined in frolic mimicry of Gothic art. 
The cave is forty feet in depth and about sixty in height, and the 
outermost rock of the roofing spans the entrance with an arch, which, 
half of the way, is as symmetrical as if an architect had planned it. 
Was it skill or patience that the gnomes failed in, that excavated or 
heaved it ; or did they design to produce in their wild sport merely 
torsos of the majesty of a great minster ? 

From this deep chasm, where quivering sunbeams play 

Upon its loftiest crags, mine eyes behold 

A gloomy Niche, capacious, blank, and cold; 

A concave, free from shrubs and mosses gray; 

In semblance fresh, as if, with dire affray, 

Some statue, placed amid these regions old 

For tutelary service, thence had rolled, 

Startling the flight of timid Yesterday! 

Was it by mortals sculptured? — weary slaves 

Of slow endeavor! or abruptly cast 

Into rude shape by fire, with roaring blast 

lempestuously let loose from central caves'? 

Or fashioned by the turbulence of waves, 

Then, when o'er highest hills the Deluge pass'd? 

The whole front of the recess is shaded by trees, which kindly 
stand apart just enough to frame off Kiarsarge in lovely symmetry, — 
so that a more romantic resting place for an hour or two in a warm 
afternoon can hardly be imagined. We have said that the measure 
and spirit of " The Lotos Eaters " harmonize with the summer air 



168 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



and landscape of North Conway. But think of driving across those 
meadows in a breezy afternoon and taking a poem fresh from the hps 
of Tennyson ! No, we do not pretend that such has ever been our 
fortune ; but we do say that in a wagon, as we drove across the inter- 
vale, under the shadow of the maple groves, and twice through the 
hurrying river which nearly buried the wheels with its merry flood, 
we caught the first echo that had fallen on our ears, this side the sea, 
from the richest strain of the Laureate's silver bugle. It was when a 
lady chanted in joyous soprano to a delighted party, — 

The splendor falls on castle walls 

And snowy summits old in story; 
The long light shakes across the lakes, 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; 
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

hark, hear! how thin and clear, 
And thinner, clearer, farther going; 
sweet and far, from cliff and scar, 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! 
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying ; 
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

love, they die in yon rich sky, 

They faint on hill or field or river; 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 
And grow forever and forever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
And answer, echoes, answer, dyiDg, dying, dying. 

Is not that an association to glorify forever in memory the soft 
and drooping clouds that overhung the Saco, the lights and shadows 
that skimmed, widening, melting, ever-renewing their fruitless but joy- 
ous chase over the billowy grass, and the sombre patience of Mount 
Washington, himself flecked with mottled light and gloom ? Of 
course the echoes from Echo Lake, which lies hi front of " The 
Cathedral," sounded that afternoon more mellow, floating back from 
" Elfland," rather than from the face of a granite wall. And yet 
one visit to the lake by moonlight lies even more softly and winningly 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



169 



in memory. The savage twin-cliffs and the wooded link that unites 
them, like the bond of the Siamese pair, reflected in that little sheet 
of water, seemed a picture rather than a reality — a dream lying yet 
before the imagination of the Creator, rather than the embodiment of 
it in the rough elements of nature. An evening spent there when 
the full rising moon silvers " The Ledges," and burnishes the bosom 
of the lake, and sheds its beams among its dark pine fringes, to slip 
slowly down the stately columns of the larger trees, will long be 
remembered as a sweet midsummer night's dream. 

But we must now pass with only a word of greeting " Diana's 
Baths," which also belong to the resources of the visit to " The 
Cathedral," — the valley views offered from the ride on the Dundee 
road, — the excursion to Jackson with the cascade pictures on a 
branch of the Ellis River — the wild glen to be found in the drive 
to Sligo — the triple cascades of Wildwood Brook, not long since 
discovered — the glorious excursion to Fryeburg, with the views 
gained of Jockey Cap, and the Saco intervales of that village, and 
Lovell's Pond which has the distinction of being more deeply dyed 
with tradition than any other sheet of water in Xew England. 
Gould's Pond and the ride to Chocorua Lake we have spoken of in 
a former chapter. 

The " Artist's Brook " in the village itself is the only feature of 
the scenery that we can delay with now. Its true celebration is to 
be found in the artists' studios, or in the galleries, for which it has 
furnished exquisite tangles of foliage and light ; rough boulders 
around whose clinging mosses the water slips with a flash that can be 
painted but with a voice that cannot be entrapped ; curves through 
diminutive glens, half in shadow and sprinkled on the other side with 
light through fluttering birch leaves, or an over-hanging beech with 
marbled stem, such as Kensett loves to paint ; and more open pas- 
sages, where the water brawls, and the thinner trees of the sides show 
the bulk of distant Washington. Sitting down on the meadow where 
the brook loiters over its sandy bed, and sometimes stops to cool 
itself in the green shadow of an elm before it moves on to join the 



170 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Saco near at hand, does it not sing essentially the same song to us 
that the brook did which Tennyson has thus translated ? 




I come from haunts of coot and hern, 

I make a sudden sally 
And sparkle out among the fern, 

To bicker down a valley. 

By thirsty hills I hurry down, 
Or slip between the ridges, 

By twenty thorps, a little town, 
And half a hundred bridges. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



Till last by Philip's farm I flow- 
To join the brimming river, 

For men may come and men may go, 
But I go on forever. 

I chatter over stony ways, 

In little sharps and trebles 
I bubble into eddying bays, 

I babble on the pebbles. 

With many a curve my banks I fret 
By many a field and fallow, 

And many a fairy foreland set 
With willow-weed and mallow 

I chatter, chatter, as I flow 
To join the brimming river, 

For men may come and men may go 
But I go on forever. 

I wind about, and in and out, 
With here a blossom sailing, 

And here and there a lusty trout, 
And hei'e and there a grayling. 

And here and there a foamy flake 

Upon mc, as I travel, 
With many a silvery waterbreak 

Above the golden gravel. 

And draw them all along, and flow 
To join the brimming river, 

For men may come and men may go, 
But I go on forever. 

I steal by lawns and grassy plots, 

I slide by hazel covers; 
I move the sweet forget-me-nots 

That grow for happy lovers. 

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, 
Among my skimming swallows; 

I make the netted sunbeam dance 
Against my sandy shallows. 



172 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



I murmur under moon and stars 

In brarnbly wildernesses; 
I linger by my shingly bars, 

I loiter round my cresses; 

And out again I curve and flow 

To join the brimming river, 
For men may come and men may go 

But I go on forever. 

A sonnet of Wordsworth's also, written evidently in praise of some 
English stream, that in quality and character is cousin to this gem of 
North Conway, ought to be quoted here. 

Brook! whose society the Poet seeks, 
Intent his wasted spirits to renew; 
And whom the curious Painter doth pursue 
Through rocky passes, among flowery creeks, 
And tracks thee dancing down thy waterbreaks; 
If wish were mine some type of thee to view, 
Thee, and not thee thyself, I would not do 
Like Grecian Artists, give thee human cheeks, 
Channels for tears; no Naiad shouldst thou be, — 
Have neither limbs, feet, feathers, joints, nor hairs; 
It seems the Eternal Soul is clothed in thee 
With purer robes than those of flesh and blood, 
And hath bestowed on thee a better good; 
Unwearied joy, and life without its cares. 

We have already said that the dreaminess which pervades the air 
and hangs around the walls of North Conway, rests upon the slopes 
of Kiarsarge and veils the roughness and barrenness of its acclivi- 
ties. Seen through the haze of a genial afternoon it seems as though 
it would be pastime to mount its cone, carpeted then to the eye with 
a plushy depth and indistinctness of mellow and cross-lighted air. 
One cannot see then how he could require more than half an hour to 
gain its summit from the base, although it stands twenty-seven hun- 
dred feet above the valley. Many persons have been tempted by 
this illusion to ascend on foot, and have thus been brought to a perma- 
nent conviction that a mountain is something very different in genus 
from a hill. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



173 



Do not some of our readers recall the fascination of the diorama 
exhibited to those whom Kiarsarge allows to pass above its elegant 
shoulders ? Do they not call to mind the mob of mountains that 
first storms the sight from the north and west, as though Mount 
Washington had given a party, and all the hills were hurrying up to 
answer the invitation ? Can they not see again with the mind's eye 
the different effects of color and shadow upon the lines of hills, 
according to then distance, height, and the position of the sun, and 
how they soon group themselves in relation to the two great centres — 
the notched summit of Lafayette and the noble dome of Washington ? 
Do they not recall the soothing contrast to these shaggy surges of the 
land in the far stretching open country of the south, gemmed with 
lakes and ponds, brilliant with cultivation, sweeping out like a vast 
and many colored sea to 

the grim gray rounding 
Of this bullet of the earth 
On which we sail, 

over which, far to the southwest, the filmy outline of Monadnoc 
gleams like a sail just fading out upon a vaster sea ? Did they 
ascend for the purpose of passing the night in the house that is 
clamped to the rocks of the sharp summit, and can they not call up 
the picture of the glorious purple light, dyed into the hills behind 
them by the level rays of the sinking sun ? Can they not repeat by 
recollection the contrast of the heavy shadows of the highest ranges 
with a heaven of molten sold, 

with light and heat intensely glowing, 
While, to the middle height of the pure ether, 
One deepening sapphire from the amber spread? 

Or was the evening so clear that the shadow of Kiarsarge itself 
stretched slowly towards Portland, and faded out when the point of 
its unsubstantial triangle had climbed half up the slope of Pleasant 
Mountain in Maine ? Or was it the cloud scenery of sunset that wa 
the prominent splendor of the spectacle, and did 



174 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



masses of crimson glory, 
Pale lakes of blue, studded with fiery islands, 
Bright golden bars, cold peaks of slaty rock. 
Mountains of fused amethyst and copper, 
Fierce flaming eyes, with black o'erhanging brows, 
Light floating curls of brown or golden hair, 
And rosy flushes, like warm dreams of love 
Make rich and wonderful the failing day, 
That, like a wounded dolphin, on the shore 
Of night's black waves, died in a thousand glories ? 

Perhaps they saw the full moon rise after the flames of sunset had 
faded. Perhaps they recollect how slowly its red and swollen disc 
loomed up the East through the thick vapors, and then, as soon as its 
light became clear, left a streak of silver on the horizon which must 
have been a strip of the ocean. And they renew in memory the 
delight it gave them to watch those gentle beams leap down from 
mountain tops into the vales, and waken by successive flashes the 
sleeping lakes that gem the vicinity of Kiarsarge. Or, if the moon- 
light did not give this picture of a new-created world, they may 
remember how, after sunset, the poet's picture was interpreted to 
them : — 

Eepentant day 
Frees with his dying hand the pallid stars 
He held imprisoned since his young, hot dawn. 
Now watch with what a silent step of fear 
They'll steal out one by one, and overspread 
The cool delicious meadows of the night. 
And lo, the first one flutters in the blue 
With a quick sense of liberty and joy! 

And then the sunrise repeated the effects of light and gloom, — the 
purple on the hills, the gigantic shadows, the conflict between the 
radiance on the summits and the dusk in the valleys, which the pre- 
vious evening had shown. And again the clearly defined outline of 
Kiarsarge, they will remember, lay before them — but on the hills at 
the west now — sharper than when the sunset created it, and slowly 
shrunk towards the foot of the mountain. 

And if these visions have been seen, as a human being should see 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



176 



them, they have become staple of -wisdom and a well of joy. They 
describe almost the full circle of the privilege amid which the senses 
are set. If the spectacles could be shown as miracles, the first cre- 
ations of the spirit that quickeneth all things, what wonder and rapture 
would respond to them ! Are they of less meaning and worth because 
they are visions that have been renewed and varied perpetually for 
ages by the indwelling Life ? 

Alas! thine is the bankruptcy 
Blessed Nature so to see. 

Ever fresh the broad creation, 
A divine improvisation, 
From the heart of God proceeds, 
A single will, a million deeds. 

North Conway, as we have said in a former chapter, lies at the 
proper distance from the hills that inclose it, and from the Mount 
Washington range, to command various and rich landscape effects. 
And this no doubt is the great charm of the place to scores of those 
that pass several weeks of the summer in the village, who perhaps 
could not explain to themselves the secret of their fascination. A 
great many persons think of mountain scenery as monotonous. If 
you live directly under a savage mountain wall, like one side of the 
Notch, it may be. If you stay a few miles off from a great range in 
full view, nothing can be less monotonous. 

" When the lofty and barren mountain," says a legend I have 
somewhere read, " was first upheaved into the sky, and from its ele- 
vation looked down on the plains below, and saw the valley and the 
less elevated hills covered with verdant and fruitful trees, it sent up 
to Brahma something like a murmur of complaint,—' Why thus bar- 
ren ? why these scarred and naked sides exposed to the eye of man ? ' 
And Brahma answered, i The very light shall clothe thee, and the 
shadow of the passing cloud shall be as a royal mantle. More ver- 
dure would be less light. Thou shalt share in the azure of heaven, 
and the youngest and whitest cloud of a summer's sky shall nestle in 
thy bosom. Thou belongest half to us.' 



176 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



" So was the mountain dowered. And so too," adds the legend, 
" have the loftiest minds of men been in all ages dowered. To lower 
elevations have been given the pleasant verdure, the vine, and the 
olive. Light, light alone, — and the deep shadow of the passing 
cloud, — these are the gifts of the prophets of the race." 

The glory of the mountains is color. A great many people think 
that they see all that there is to be seen of the White Hills in 
one visit. Have they not been driven from Conway to the Jsotch, 
and did they not have an outside seat on the stage on a clear day ? 
Have they not seen the Glen when there were no clouds, and 
ascended Mount Washington, and devoted a day and a half to Fran- 
conia, and crossed Winnipiseogee on their way home ? At any rate, 
if they have staid a week in one spot, they cannot understand why 
they may not be said to have exhausted it ; and if they have passed 
one whole season in a valley, it might seem to them folly to go to the 
same spot the next year. 

But how is it in regard to a great gallery abroad ? Is a man of 
true taste satisfied with going once to see a Claude, to see the color- 
ing of a Titian, the expression of a Madonna, the sublime torso of 
Hercules, or the knotted muscles of the Laocoon ? Is one visit 
enough to satisfy a man of taste with a collection that has three or 
four first-rate pictures, each by a Church, a Durand, a Bierstadt, a 
Gignoux ? 

But what if you could go into a gallery where the various sculp- 
ture took different attitudes every day ? where a Claude or a Turner 
was present and changed the sunsets on his canvas, shifted the dra- 
peries of mist and shadow, combined clouds and meadows and ridges 
in ever-varying beauty, and wiped them all out at night ? or where 
Kensett, Coleman, Champney, Gay, Church, Durand, Wheelock, 
were continually busy in copying from new conceptions the freshness 
of morning and the pomp of evening light upon the hills, the count 
less passages and combinations of the clouds, the laughs and glooms 
of the brooks, the innumerable expressions that flit over the meadows, 
the various vestures of shadow, light, and hue, in which they have 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



177 



seen the stalwart hills enrobed ? Would one visit then enable a mar; 
to say that he had seen the gallery ? Would one season be sufficient 
to drain the interest of it ? Thus the mountains are ever changing. 
They are never two days the same. The varying airs of summer, 
the angles at which, in different summer months, the light strikes 
them, give different general character to the landscapes which they 
govern. And then when we think of the perpetual frolic of the 
sun blaze and the shadow upon them, never twice alike ; the brilhant 
scarfs into which the mists that stripe or entwine them are changed ; 
the vivid splendors that often flame upon them at evening, 

Like the torrents of the sun 
Up the horizon walls; 

the rich, deep, but more vague and modest hues, which we try in 
vain to bring under definition, that glow upon them in different airs ; 
and the evanescent tints that touch them only now and then in a long 
season, as though they were something too rare and pure to be shown 
for more than a moment to dwellers of the earth, and then only as a 
hint of what may be displayed in diviner climes, — we see that it is the 
landscape-eye alone, and the desire to cultivate it, which is needed to 
make the mountains, from any favorable district such as North Con- 
way, an undrainable resource and joy. 

Those who seek a sort of melodramatic astonishment by the height 
of their peaks and the gloomy menace of sheer and desolate walls, 
will be disappointed at first, and will not find that the mountains 
" grow upon them." But it is not so with color. That is a per- 
petual surprise. The glory of that, even upon the New Hampshire 
mountains, cannot be exaggerated. They should be sought for their 
pomp, far more than for their configuration. 

" The fact is," says Mr. Ruskin, " we none of us enough appre- 
ciate the nobleness and sacredness of color. Nothing is more com- 
mon than to hear it spoken of as a subordinate beauty, — nay, even as 
the mere source of a sensual pleasure ; and we might almost believe 
that we were daily among men who 



178 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Could strip, for aught the prospect yields 
To them, their verdure from the fields; 
And take the radiance from the clouds 
With which the sun his setting shrouds. 

But it is not so. Such expressions are used for the most part in 
thoughtlessness ; and if the speakers would only take the pains to 
imagine what the world and their own existence would become if the 
blue were taken from the sky, and the gold from the sunshine, and 
the verdure from the leaves, and the crimson from the blood which is 
the life of man, the flush from the cheek, the darkness from the eye, 
the radiance from the hair, — if they could but see, for an instant, 
white human creatures living in a white world, — they would soon feel 
what they owe to color. The fact is, that of all God's gifts to the 
sight of man, color is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. 
We speak rashly of gay color and sad color, for color cannot at once 
be good and gay. All good color is in some degree pensive, the 
loveliest is melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful minds are 
those which love color the most. 

" I know that this will sound strange in many ears, and will be 
especially startling to those who have considered the subject chiefly 
with reference to painting ; for the great Venetian schools of color 
are not usually understood to be either pure or pensive, and the idea 
of its preeminence is associated in nearly every mind with the coarse- 
ness of Rubens, and the sensualities of Correggio and Titian. But a 
more comprehensive view of art will soon correct this impression. It 
will be discovered, in the first place, that the more faithful and ear- 
nest the religion of the painter, the more pure and prevalent is the 
system of his color. It will be found in the second place, that where 
color becomes a primal intention with a painter otherwise mean or 
sensual, it instantly elevates him, and becomes the one sacred and 
saving element in his work. The very depth of the stoop to which 
the Venetian painters and Rubens sometimes condescend, is a conse- 
quence of their feeling confidence in the power of their color to keep 
them from falling. They hold on by it, as by a chain let down from 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



17S 



heaven, with one hand, though they may sometimes seem to gather 
dust and ashes with the other. And, in the last place, it will be 
found that so surely as a painter is irreligious, thoughtless, or obscene 
in disposition, so surely is his coloring cold, gloomy, and valueless. 
The opposite poles of art in this respect are Fra Angelico and Salva- 
tor Rosa ; of whom the one was a man who smiled seldom, wept 
often, prayed constantly, and never harbored an impure thought. 
His pictures are simply so many pieces of jewelry, the colors of the 
draperies being perfectly pure, as various as those of a painted win- 
dow, chastened only by paleness, and relieved upon a gold ground. 
Salvator was a dissipated jester and satirist, a man who spent his 
life in masking and revelry. But his pictures are full of horror, 
and their color is for the most part gloomy-gray. Truly, it would 
seem as if art had so much of eternity in it, that it must take its dye 
from the close rather than the course of life. 4 In such laughter the 
heart of man is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness.' 

" These are no singular instances. I know no law more severely 
without exception than this of the connection of pure color with pro- 
found and noble thought. The late Flemish pictures, shallow in con- 
ception and obscure in subject, are always sombre in color. But the 
early religious painting of the Flemings is as brilliant in hue as it is 
holy in thought. The Bellinis, Francias, Peruginos painted in crim- 
son, and blue, and gold. The Caraccis, Guidos, and Rembrandts, in 
brown and gray. The builders of our great cathedrals veiled their 
casements, and wrapped their pillars with one robe of purple splen- 
dor. The builders of the luxurious Renaissance left their palaces 
filled only with cold, white light, and in the paleness of their native 
stone." 

The inexperienced eye has no conception of the affluent delight 
that is kindled by the opulence of pure and tender colors on the 
mountains. A ramble by the banks of the Saco in North Conway, 
or along the Androscoggin below Gorham, will often yield from this 
cause what we may soberly call rapture of vision. A great many 



180 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



persons, in looking around from Artist's Hill, would say at first that 
green and blue and white and gray, in the foliage, the grass, the sky, 
the clouds, and the mountains, were the only colors to be noticed, 
and these in wide, severely contrasted masses. We should go en- 
tirely beyond their appreciation in speaking of the light brown and 
olive plateaus rising from the wide flats of meadow green, the richer 
and more subtle hues on the darker belt of lower hills, the sheeny 
spaces of pure sunshine upon smooth slopes or level sward, the glim- 
mer of pearly radiance upon pools of aerial sapphire brought from the 
distant mountains in the wandering Saco, the blue and white misti- 
ness from clouds and distant air gleaming in the chasms of brooks 
fresh from the cool top of Kiarsarge, and the gold or silver glances 
of light upon knolls or smooth boulders scattered here and there upon 
the irregular and tawny ground, and upon the house-roofs beyond. 
Yet let a man who thinks these particulars are imaginary hold his 
head down, and thus reverse his eyes, and then say whether the deli- 
cacy and variety of hues are exaggerated in such a statement. There 
are those who have such perception of colors with their eyes upright. 
And they will know that the tints just noted are only hints of a great 
color-symphony to be wrought out upon the wide landscape. They 
know how the rich or sombre passages of shade, and the olive strips and 
slaty breadths of darkness will be transformed in some glorious after- 
noon, when the landscape assumes its full pomp, into masses of more 
etherial gloom, and made magnificent by the intermixture of gorgeous 
tones of purples, emeralds and russets with cloudy azure and sub- 
tle gray along the second part of the mountain outworks. They 
know how those flecks of pearl and sapphire upon the meadow will 
mingle and spread with shifting azure and amethyst upon the lower 
parts of the great mountains ; and how the spaces of sunshine, the 
blue and white mistiness, and the golden and silver glances of light, 
will assume new beauty and larger proportions amid the gleaming hues 
of the looming azure ridge, the waving gray and purple of cloud-en- 
wrapped peak, the tender flashes of changeful light and tint in sky 
and cloud, and the tremulous violet and aerial orange of the myste- 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



181 



rious ravines, with their wondrous sloping arras, on whose striped 
folds, inwrought with gold and silver upon pale emerald ground, are, 
one might think, the mystical signs of some weird powers that work 
from within the earth. 

But those who cannot detect this range and harmony of hues upon 
a complicated landscape like that seen from Artist's Hill, have no 
doubt noticed and enjoyed the simpler and stronger contrasts revealed 
upon one or two features of such a scene. They have watched, per- 
haps, the shadow of a wandering cloud thrown over a towering moun- 
tain a few miles off, and covering it with a dusk that conceals all its 
variety of form, as if a purple mantle had been suddenly cast upon 
it ; and they remember how splendidly it made the sparkling gladness 
of the waters contrast with its undisturbed breadth of gloom. They 
have rejoiced, when the shadow passed, in seeing the soft, cloudy blue 
show here and there flakes and lines of tender green and russet and 
pale orange, that just hint peaks and ridges, which in another change 
of light may fill the mountain surface with many purple tents tipped 
and edged with gold. They know how grand is the effect upon the 
mountains, when there are only a few broken lines of dim light near 
their tops to show the depth of the shade that drapes them — as though 
they were themselves darker shadows of soaring earth transformed to 
cloud ! Or possibly their memory reports to them how, in the rich 
light of evening, a great pyramid will stand up, as we have sometimes 
seen the charming Mount Madison, draped in a gorgeous tunic whose 
warp seemed to be aerial sapphire overshot with threads of gold. 
And they can understand that the visitor is still more fortunate who 
has an evening provided for him when the light is clear, but inter- 
rupted by struggling masses of bright cumuli. Ah, how the light 
breaking through the shifting openings brings out a continual succes- 
sion of scenic effects ! The clouds break and pass, and the sunshine 
and shadows ever changing place, reveal, each instant, along the 
mountain sides, new wonders of soaring ridge, jutting crags delicately 
veined, and rounded slopes declining to pale depths of winding 

26 



182 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



ravines, down whose shadowed sides crinkle the narrow, silvery lines 
of the landslides, like faint lightning in far-off clouds. The next in- 
stant, perhaps, the clouds, closing together, leave a monotonous 
breadth of purple darkness over all. And then, drifting irregularly 
apart, they open the opportunity for a sunbeam to slip through upon 
the broad fields of cold shadow. And like a brand of white flame, it 
hastens to kindle a running fire which consumes the darkness, mantles 
over the sloping terraces and flashing pinnacles, and leaves a magnifi- 
cent symbol of the " Allegro " of Milton, where a moment before 
" II Penseroso " was suggested by the stately gloom. 

The spectacles that, in some rare week of summer, are shown with- 
in the compass of a score of hours in one of the White Mountain 
valleys, interpret for us the passage of our great poet : " How does 
Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements ! Give me health 
and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The 
dawn is my Assyria ; the sunset and moon-rise my Paphos, and 
unimaginable realms of faerie ; broad noon shall be my England of 
the senses and the understanding ; the night shall be my Germany 
of mystic philosophy and dreams." And we cannot better close these 
pages on the privilege of sight in a village like North Conway than 
with another charming passage by Mr. Emerson which he kindly con- 
sented to extract for us from a manuscript lecture. " The world is 
not made up to the eye of figures, — that is only half ; it is also made 
of color. How that mysterious element washes the universe with its 
enchanting waves ! The sculptor had ended his work, — and behold ! 
a new world of dream-like glory. This is the last stroke of nature ; — 
beyond color we cannot go. In like manner, life is made up not of 
knowledge only, but of love also. If thought is form, sentiment is 
color. It clothes the poor skeleton world with space, variety, and 
glow. The hues of sunset make life great and romantic to a wretch ; 
so the affections make some pretty web of cottage and fireside details 
bright, populous, important, and claiming the high place in our 
history. " 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



188 




In Scotland, a highland pass, so wild and romantic as that from 
Upper Bartlett to the Crawford House, would be overhung with 

26 * 



181 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



traditions along the whole winding wall of its wilderness ; and legends 
that had been enshrined in song and ballad would be as plentiful as 
the streams that leap singing towards the Saco, down their rocky 
stairs. But no hill, no sheer battlement, no torrent that ploughs and 
drains the barriers of this narrow and tortuous glen, suggests any 
Indian legend. One cascade, however, about half a mile from the 
former residence of old Abel Crawford, is more honored by the sad 
story associated with it, than by the picturesqueness of the crags 
through which it hurries for the last mile or two of its descending 
course. It is called " Nancy's Brook;" and the stage-drivers show 
to the passengers the stone which is the particular monument of the 
tragedy, bearing the name " Nancy's Rock." 

Here, late in the autumn of the year 1778, a poor girl, who lived 
with a family in Jefferson, was found frozen to death. She was 
engaged to be married to a man who was employed in the same 
family where she served. She had intrusted to him all her earnings, 
and the understanding was, that in a few days they should leave for 
Portsmouth, to be married there. But during her temporary absence 
in Lancaster, nine miles from Jefferson, the man started with his 
employer for Portsmouth, without leaving any explanation or message 
for her. She learned the fact of her desertion on the same day that 
her lover departed. At once she walked back to Jefferson, tied up a 
small bundle of clothing, and in spite of all warnings and entreaties, 
set out on foot to overtake the faithless fugitive. Snow had already 
fallen ; it was nearly night ; the distance to the first settlement near 
the Notch was thirty miles ; and there was no road through the wil- 
derness but a hunter's path marked by spotted trees. She pressed 
on through the night, as the story runs, against a snow-storm and a 
northwest wind, in the hope of overtaking her lover at the camp in 
the Notch, before the party should start in the morning. She 
reached it soon after they had left, and found the ashes of the camp- 
fire warm. 

It was plain to those, who, alarmed for her safety, had followed on 
from Jefferson to overtake her, that she had tried in vain to rekindle 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



185 



the fire in the lonely camp. But the fire in her heart did not falter, 
and she still moved on, wet, cold, and hungry, with resolution uncon- 
quered by the thirty miles' tramp through the wilderness, on the 
bitter autumn night. She climbed the wild pass of the Notch which 
only one woman had scaled before — for it was then a matter of great 
difficulty to clamber over the steep, rough rocks — and followed the 
track of the Saco towards Conway. Several miles of the roughest part 
of the way she travelled thus, often fording the river. But her strength 
was spent by two or three hours of such toil ; and she was found by 
the party in pursuit of her, chilled and stiff in the snow, with her head 
resting upon her staff, at the foot of an aged tree near " Nancy's 
Bridge," not many hours after she had ceased to breathe. When 
the lover of the unhappy girl heard the story of her faithfulness, her 
suffering, and her dreadful death, he became insane ; and, after a 
few weeks, as one account informs us, after a few years, as another 
states it, died, a raving madman. And there are those who believe 
that often in still nights the valley walls near Mount Crawford echo 
the shrieks and groans of the restless ghost of Nancy's lover. 



THE NOTCH. 

Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! 
Beware the awful avalanche ! 



The leaves are falling, falling, 

Solemnly and slow; 
Caw! caw! the rooks are calling, 

It is a sound of woe, 
A sound of woe! 

Through woods and mountain passes 
The winds, like anthems, roll; 

They are chanting solemn masses, 
Singing: "Pray for this poor soul, 
Pray— pray! " 



186 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



And the hooded clouds, like friars, 

Tell their beads in drops of rain, 
And patter their doleful prayers; — 

But their prayers are all in vain, 
All in vain! 

In North Conway we were surrounded by mountain splendor, cheer, 
and peace ; the gradually darkening pass through Bartlett, and the 
pathos of the story murmured by Nancy's Brook, prepare us for the 
impression of mountain wrath and ravage when we reach those awful 
mountain walls whose jaws, as we enter them, seem ready to close 
together upon the little Willey House, the monument of the great 
disaster of the White Hills. 

There is no Indian tradition connected with the Notch. We 
have no record that any Indians ever saw it. It was discovered in 
1772 by a hunter named Nash, who had climbed a tree on Cherry 
Mountain. The farmers of Jefferson and Bethlehem were very glad 
to learn that there was a prospect of a more direct and speedy 
communication with the towns below, and with Portsmouth, than by 
winding around the easterly base of the great range. But the early 
experiments of passing through the Notch to reach the lowlands 
seemed to cost in toil and peril more than an equivalent for the gain 
in time. 

Huge terraces of granite black 
Afforded rude and cumber'd track; 
For from the mountain hoar, 
Hurl'd headlong in some night of fear, 
When yell'd the wolf and fled the deer, 
Loose crags had toppled o'er. 



For all is rocks at random thrown, 

Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone, 

As if were here denied 

The summer sun, the spring's sweet dew, 

That clothe with many a varied hue 

The bleakest mountain-side. 

Horses were pulled up the narrowest and most jagged portion of 
the Notch between Mount Webster and Mount Willard, and let 
down again by ropes. And the primitive method of transporting any 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



187 



commodities was to cut two poles some fifteen feet in length, nail a 
couple of bars across the middle, on which a bag or barrel could be 
fastened, then harness the horse into the smaller ends which served 
as thills, and let the larger ends, which had no wheels under them, 
drag on the ground. The first article of commerce that was carried 
in this way from the sea-shore, through the solemn walls and over 
the splintered outlet of the Notch, was a barrel of rum. It was 
taxed heavily, in its own substance, however, to ensure its passage, 
and reached the Amonoosuc meadows in a very reduced condition. 
The account between highlands and lowlands on the large ledger of 
traffic was balanced, soon after, by a barrel of tobacco, raised on the 
meadows of Lancaster, which, by horse-power and ropes, was let 
down the pass under Mount Willard, and, after crossing the Saco 
thirty-two times before reaching Bartlett, was sent on its smoother 
way to Portsmouth. 

The Willey House, Mr. Spaulding tells us, was built as early as 
1793. In 1803 a road was laid out through the Notch to Bartlett, 
at a cost of forty thousand dollars ; and so many teams passed 
through with produce that it was quite necessary and not unprofitable 
to keep a house and stable in the Notch for their accommodation. 
In the autumn of 1825, Mr. Samuel Willey, Jr., with his family, 
moved into this little tenement, which has derived such tragic interest 
from his name. During the following winter, we are told that his 
hospitable kindness and shelter were greeted with as much gratitude 
by travellers who were obliged to contend with the biting frost, the 
furious storms, and the drifted snows of the Notch, as the monks of 
St. Bernard receive from the chilled wanderers of the Alps. The 
teamsters used to say, that when a furious northwester blew through 
the Notch in winter, it took two men to hold one man's hair on. 

In the spring of 1826, Mr. Willey began to enlarge the conven- 
iences of the little inn for entertaining guests. And in the early 
summer the spot looked very attractive. There was a beautiful 
meadow in front, stretching to the foot of the frowning wall of Mount 
Webster, and gemmed with tall rock-maples. To be sure, Mount 



188 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Willey rose at a rather threatening angle, some two thousand feet 
behind the house ; but it was not so savage in appearance as Mount 
Webster opposite, and pretty much the whole of its broad, steep wall 
was draped in green. In a bright June morning the little meadow 
farm, necked with the nibbling sheep, and cooled by the patches of 
shadow flung far out over the grass from the thick maple foliage, must 
have seemed to a traveller pausing there, and hearing the pleasant 
murmur of the Saco and the shrill sweetness of the Canada Whist 
ler, as romantic a spot as one could fly to, to escape the fever and the 
perils of the world. 

Late in June, Mr. Willey and his wife, looking from the back win- 
dows of their house in the afternoon of a misty day, saw a large mass 
of the mountain above them sliding through the fog towards their 
meadows, and almost in a line of the house itself. Rocks and earth 
came plunging down, sweeping whole trees before them, that would 
stand erect in the swift slide for rods before they fell. The slide 
moved under their eye to the very foot of the mountain, and hurled 
its frightful burden across the road. At first they were greatly ter- 
rified, and resolved to remove from the Notch. But Mr. Willey, on 
reflection, felt confident that such an event was not likely to occur 
again ; and was satisfied with building a strong hut or cave a little 
below the house in the Notch, which would certainly be secure, and 
to which the family might fly for shelter, if they should see or hear 
another avalanche that seemed to threaten their home. 

Later in the summer there was a long hot drought. By the mid- 
dle of August, the earth, to a great depth in the mountain region, 
was dried to powder. Then came several days of south wind beto- 
kening copious rain. On Sunday the 27th of August, the rain began 
to fall. On Monday the 28th, the storm was very severe, and the 
rain was a deluge. Towards evening, the clouds around the White 
Mountain range and over the Notch, to those who saw them from a 
distance, were very heavy, black, and awful. It was plain that they 
were to be busy in their office as a 

Factory of river and of rain. 



THE 8AC0 Y ALLEY. 



189 



Later in the night they poured their burden in streams. Between / 
nine o'clock in the evening and the dawn of Tuesday, the Saco rose 
twenty-four feet, and swept the whole intervale between* the Notch 
and Conway. 

The little Rocky Branch in Bartlett, a feeder of the Saco, brought 
down trees, rocks, and logs from the hill-side, and formed a dam 
near a log-cabin on its meadow, which made in a little time a pond of 
water that undermined and floated the house, so that the family could 
not escape. They climbed into the upper part of the cabin, and 
for hours were tossed on the mad flood, hearing the roar of the 
water and the storm, and expecting every moment to be crushed or 
drowned. The cabin, however, held together, and when the water 
subsided, they were rescued from their ark. Near by, on the Ellis 
Biver, which also pours into the Saco, a herd of colts were swept 
from a yard where they were penned, and their dead bodies were 
found mangled by rocks and roots several miles below. Around 
Ethan Crawford's house, just beyond the Notch, a pond of over two 
hundred acres was formed in a few hours ; a bridge was dashed 
against a shed and carried away ninety feet of it ; many of the sheep 
were drowned, and those which escaped " looked as though they had 
been w T ashed in a mud-puddle." The water came within eighteen 
inches of the door, and between the house and stable a river was 
running. And the channel of the Ammonoosuc, near by, which on 
Sunday morning was a few yards wide, and overhung by interlaced 
trees of the ancient forest, was torn out ten times as wide by a 
mighty torrent that whirled off the banks and trees, and filled the 
broader bed with boulders, amid which in summer now the river is 
almost lost. In the little settlement of Gilead, also, thousands of tons 
of earth, rocks, and forest were loosened from the overhanging hills. 
The roar of the slides was far more frightful than the thunder, and 
the trails of fire from the rushing boulders more awful than the light- 
ning. For hours the inhabitants were in consternation. Their 
houses trembled as though an earthquake shook them, and they ex- 
pected, every moment, to be buried under an avalanche. 

27 



190 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



At Abel Crawford's, six miles from the Willey House, the river 
overflowed its banks, beat down the fences, tore up the grain, dashed 
to pieces a< new saw-mill, swept the logs, boards, and ruins into the 
sand, and then circling the house, flooded the cellar, sapped part of 
the wall, and rose about two feet on the lower floors. Mr. Crawford 
was not at home ; but the heroic wife placed lighted candles in the 
windows, and to prevent the house from being demolished by the jam 
that was threatening it, stood at a window near the corner, and, in 
the midst of the tempest, pushed away with a pole the timber, which 
the mad current would send as a battering ram against the walls. 
And now and then the lightning would show her the drowning sheep, 
bleating for help, which were hurried past the house in the flood. 

On the morning of Tuesday the sun rose into a cloudless sky, and 
the air was remarkably transparent. The North Conway farmers, 
busy in saving what they could from the raging flood of the Saco, 
saw clearly how terrible the storm had been upon the Mount Wash- 
ington range. The whole line was devastated by landslides. Great 
grooves could be distinctly seen where the torrents had torn out all 
the loose earth and stones, and left the solid ledge of the mountain 
bare. Wherever there was a brook, stones from two to five feet in 
diameter were rolled down by thousands, in tracks from ten to twenty 
rods wide, dashing huge hemlocks before them, and leaving no tree 
nor root of a tree in their path. Soon after, a party ascending by 
the Ammonoosuc counted thirty slides along the acclivity they 
climbed, some of which ravaged thus more than a hundred acres of 
the wilderness, — not only mowing off the trees, but tearing out all the 
soil and rocks to the depth of twenty and thirty feet. And on the 
declivities towards North Conway, it was thought that this one storm 
dismantled more of the great range, during the terrible hours of that 
Monday night, than all the rains of a hundred years before. 

What had been the fate of the little house in the Notch, and of the 
Willey family, during the deluge ? All communication with them on 
Tuesday morning was cut off by the floods of the Saco. But at four 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



191 



o'clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, a traveller passing Ethan Craw- " 
ford's, some seven miles above the Willey House, desired, if possible, 
to get through the Notch that night. By swimming a horse across 




the wildest part of the flood, he was put on the track. In the nar- 
rowest part of the road within the Notch, the water had torn out 
huge rocks, and left holes twenty feet deep, and had opened trenches, 

27* 



192 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



also, ten feet deep and twenty feet long. But the traveller, while 
daylight lasted, could make his way on foot over the torn and ob- 
structed road, and he managed to reach the lower part of the Notch 
just before dark. The little house was standing, but there were no 
human inmates to greet him. And what desolation around ! The 
mountain behind it, once robed in beautiful green, was striped for 
two or three miles with ravines deep and freshly torn. The lovely 
little meadow in front was covered with wet sand and rocks inter- 
mixed with branches of green trees, "with shivered trunks, whose 
splintered ends " looked similar to an old peeled birchbroom," and 
with dead logs, which had evidently long been buried beneath the 
mountain soil. Not even any of the bushes that grew up on the 
meadow in front of the house were to be seen. The slide from the 
mountain had evidently divided, not many rods above the house, 
against a sharp ledge of rock. It had then joined its frightful mass 
in front of the house, and pushed along to the bed of the Saco, cov- 
ering the meadow, in some places thirty feet, with the frightful debris 
and mire. 

The traveller entered the house and went through it. The doors 
were all open ; the beds and their clothing showed that they had 
been hurriedly left ; a Bible was lying open on a table, as if it had 
been read just before the family had departed. The traveller con- 
soled himself, at last, with the feeling that the inmates had escaped 
to Abel Crawford's below, and then tried to sleep in one of the 
deserted beds. But in the night he heard moanings which frightened 
him so much, that he lay sleepless till dawn. Then he found that 
they were the groans of an ox in the stable, that was partly crushed 
under broken timbers which had fallen in. The two horses were 
killed. He released the ox, and went on his way towards Bartlett. 

Before any news of the disaster had reached Conway, the faithful 
dog " came down to Mr. Lovejoy's, and, by moanings, tried to make 
the family understand what had taken place. Not succeeding, he 
left, and after being seen frequently on the road, sometimes heading 
north, and then south, running almost at the top of his speed, as 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



193 



though bent on some absorbing errand, he soon disappeared from 
the region, and has never since been seen." 

On Wednesday evening suspicions of the safety of the family were 
carried down to Bartlett and North Conway, where Mr. Willey's father 
and brothers lived. But they were not credited. The terrible cer- 
tainty was to be communicated to the father in the most thrilling 
way. At midnight of Wednesday, a messenger reached the bank of 
the river opposite his house in Lower Bartlett, but could not cross. 
He blew a trumpet, blast after blast. The noise and the mountain 
echoes startled the family and neighborhood from their repose. They 
soon gathered on the river bank, and heard the sad message shouted 
to them through the darkness. 

On Thursday the 31st of August, the family and many neighbors 
were able to reach the Notch. Tall Ethan Crawford left his farm 
which the floods had ravaged, and went down through the Notch to 
meet them. " When I got there," he says, " on seeing the friends 
of that well-beloved family, and having been acquainted with them 
for many years, my heart was full and my tongue refused utterance, 
and I could not for a considerable length of time speak to one of 
them, and could only express my regards I had to them in pressing 
their hands — but gave full vent to tears. This was the second time 
my eyes were wet with tears since grown to manhood." Search was 
commenced at once for the buried bodies. The first that was ex- 
humed was one of the hired men, David Allen, a man of powerful 
frame and remarkable strength. He was but slightly disfigured. He 
was found near the top of a pile of earth and shattered timbers with 
" hands clenched and full of broken sticks and small limbs of trees." 
Soon the bodies of Mrs. Willey and her husband were discovered' — 
the latter not so crushed that it could not be recognized. 

No more could be found that day. Rude coffins were prepared, 
and tKe next day, Friday, about sunset, the simple burial-service was 
offered. Elder Samuel Hasaltine, standing amidst the company of 
strong, manly forms, whose faces were wet with tears, commenced 
the service with the words of Isaiah : " Who hath measured the 



194 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span, 
and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed 
the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance." How fitting 
this language in that solemn pass, and how unspeakably more impres- 
sive must the words have seemed, when the mountains themselves 
took them up and literally responded them, joining as mourners in 
the burial liturgy ! For the minister stood so that each one of these 
sublime words was given back by the echo, in a tone as clear and 
reverent as that in which they were uttered. "We may easily believe 
that the " effect of all this was soul-stirring beyond description." 

The next day the body of the youngest child, about three years 
old, was found, and also that of the other hired man. On Sunday, 
the eldest daughter was discovered, at a distance from the others, 
across the river. A bed was found on the ruins near her body. It 
was supposed that she was drowned, as no bruise or mark was found 
upon her. She was twelve years old, and Ethan Crawford tells us 
" she had acquired a good education, and seemed more like a gentle- 
man's daughter, of fashion and affluence, than the daughter of one 
who had located himself in the midst of the mountains." These were 
buried without any religious service. Three children, — a daughter 
and two sons, — were never found. 

It seems to us that nothing can interpret so effectively the terror 
of this tragedy as the connected statement of the simple facts so far 
as they are known. We are indebted for the facts to Rev. Benjamin 
Willey's interesting " Incidents in White Mountain History," and to 
the story of Ethan Crawford's life, now out of print. But the horror 
of that night to the doomed family, — who can imagine that ? The 
glimpses given us of the fury of the storm, by the peril of Abel 
Crawford's family, and by the experience of the settlers that were 
tossed in their hut upon the flood of the Bocky Branch, furnish but 
faint coloring of the awfulness of the tempest, as the Willey family 
must have seen and felt it. About two years after, a man who had 
moved into the same house witnessed a thunder-tempest in the night, 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



195 



which was not nearly so terrible as the storm of 1826, but which 
supplies us with better means of conceiving the tremendous passion 
of the elements amid which the Willey family were overwhelmed, and 
what must have been their consternation and despair. We are told 
that the " horror of great darkness " that filled the Notch would be 
dispelled by the blinding horror of lightning, that now and then 
kindled the vast gray wall of Mount Webster opposite the house, 
opened 

The grisly gulfs and slaty rifts 
Which seam its shiver' d head, 

and showed the torrents that were hissing down its black shelves and 
frightful precipices. Next a rock, loosened by a stream or smitten 
by a thunderbolt, would leap down the wall, followed all the way by 
a trail of splendor that lighted the whole gorge, and waking a re- 
verberating noise by its concussions, more frightful than the roar of 
the thunder, which seemed to make the very ground tremble. To 
this was added the rage of the river and the fury of the rain, — and 
all united to produce a dismay which we may well believe prevented 
the inmates from speaking for half an hour, and caused them " to 
stand and look at each other almost petrified with fear." 
For several hours the Willey family were enveloped in 

Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, 
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, 

as flamed and roared in the storm that beat upon Lear. The father 
and mother, anxious for their young children, doubtless saw, with 
their mind's eye, that fearful land-slide of June more vividly than 
any horror which the lightning showed them on the walls of their 
gigantic prison. In every pause of the thunder they were straining 
to hear the more fearful sound of the grinding avalanche. And what 
must have been the concentrated agony and dread, when they heard 
the moving of the loosened ridge ; heard nearer and nearer its accu 
mulating roar ; heard, and saw perhaps, through one flaming sheet of 
the lightning, that it was rushing in the fine of their little home; 



196 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



and, unable to command their nerves, or hoping to outrun its flood, 
rushed from their security into 

The tyranny of the open night too rough 
For nature to endure. 

The relatives who studied the ground closely after the disaster, 
were unable to conjecture why the family could not have outrun the 
land-slide, or crossed its track, if they left the house as soon as they 
heard its descent far up the mountain. Some of them at least, they 
thought, should thus have been able to escape its devastation. Mr. 
James Willey informs us that the spirit of his brother appeared to 
him in a dream, and told him that the family left the house sometime 
before the avalanche, fearing to be drowned or floated olf by the Saco, 
which had risen to their door. They fled back, he said, farther up 
the mountain to be safe against the peril of water, and thus, when 
the land-slide moved towards them, were compelled to run a greater 
distance to escape it than would have been required if they had staid 
in their home ; while they would have been swept off by the flood, if 
they had kept the line of the road which could have conducted them 
out of the Notch. It is a singular fact, Mr. Benjamin Willey tells 
us, that this explanation accounts for more known features of the 
catastrophe than any other which has been formed. It explains why 
the eldest daughter was found without a bruise, as though she had 
been drowned ; and also the fact that a bed was found near her 
body, with which certainly the family would not have encumbered 
themselves, if they had rushed from the house with the single hope of 
escaping destruction when the avalanche was near. It accounts for 
the appearance of the body of the hired man, who was first discovered. 
And, by connecting the terror of a sudden flood with the other horrors 
of the night, it brings the picture into harmony with what we know 
of the ravage and disaster along the line of the Saco below. 

The Bible was open on the table in the Willey House when it was 
entered the next day. The family were then secure from the wrath 
of elements that desolate the earth. At what place could the book 
have been found open more fitting than the eighteenth psalm, to ex- 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



197 



press the horrors of the tempest and the deliverance which the spirit 
finds ? " The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest 
gave his voice ; hailstones and coals of fire. Then the channels of 
waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered 




« 



at thy rebuke, Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. 
He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters. 
He brought me forth also into a large place ; he delivered me, because 
he delighted in me." 

28 



198 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Upon the spot where a portion of the family were buried, it was a 
custom during several years for each visitor to cast a stone. Thus a 
large monument was reared out of the ruins of the slide. One visitor, 
Dr. T. W. Parsons of Boston, has cast an offering upon the grave, 
that will last longer than the solid pile, in the following ballad, one of 
the most powerful expressions of his genius, and which might have 
obviated the necessity of the long description which we have given. 



THE WILLEY HOUSE. 
A BALLAD OF THE WHITE HILLS. 

Come, children, put your baskets down, 
And let the blushing berries be; 

Sit here and wreathe a laurel crown, 
And if I win it, give it me. 

'Tis afternoon — it is July — 

The mountain shadows grow and grow; 
Your time of rest and mine is nigh — 

The moon was rising long ago. 

While yet on old Chocorua's top 
The lingering sunlight says farewell, 

Your purple fingered labor stop, 
And hear a tale I have to tell. 

ii. 

You see that cottage in the glen, 

Yon desolate forsaken shed — 
Whose mouldering threshold, now and then, 

Only a few stray travellers tread. 

No smoke is curling from its roof, 

At eve no cattle gather round, 
No neighbor now, with dint of hoof, 

Prints his glad visit on the ground. 

A happy home it was of yore: 

At morn the flocks went nibbling by, 

And Farmer Willey, at his door, 

Oft made their reckoning with his eye. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



Where yon rank alder trees have sprung, 
And birches cluster thick and tall, 

Once the stout apple overhung, 
With his red gifts, the orchard wall. 

Eight fond and pleasant, in their ways, 

The gentle Willey people were; 
I knew them in those peaceful days, 

And Hilary — every one knew her. 

in. 

Two summers now had seared the hills, 

Two years of little rain or dew; 
High up the courses of the rills 

The wild rose and the raspberry grew; 

The mountain sides were cracked and dry, 
And frequent fissures on the plain, 

Like mouths, gaped open to the sky, 
As though the parched earth prayed for rain. 

One sultry August afternoon, 

Old Willey, looking toward the West, 

Said — " We shall hear the thunder soon ; 
Oh! if it bring us rain, 'tis blest." 

And even with his word, a smell 
Of sprinkled fields passed through the air, 

And from a single cloud there fell 

A few large drops — the rain was there. 

Ere set of sun a thunder-stroke 

Gave signal to the floods to rise; 
Then the great seal of heaven was broke ! 

Then burst the gates that barred the skies ! 

While from the west the clouds rolled on, 
And from the nor' west gathered fast; 

" We'll have enough of rain anon," 
Said Willey—" if this deluge last." 

For all these cliffs that stand sublime 
Around, like solemn priests appeared, 

Gray Druids of the olden time, 
Each with his white and streaming beard. 

Till in one sheet of seething foam 

The mingling torrents joined their might; 

But in the Willeys' quiet home 

Was naught but silence and " Good night ! ** 
28* 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



For soon they went to their repose, 
And in their beds, all safe and warm, 

Saw not how fast the waters rose, 
Heard not the growing of the storm. 

But just before the stroke of ten, 
Old Willey looked into the night, 

And called upon his two hired men, 
And woke his wife, who struck a light; 

Though her hand trembled, as she heard 
The horses whinnying in the stall, 

And — "children!" was the only word, 
That woman from her lips let fall. 

"Mother!" the frighted infants cried, 
" What is it? has a whirlwind come?" 

Wildly the weeping mother eyed 
Each little darling, but was dumb. 

A sound! as though a mighty gale 
Some forest from its hold had riven, 

Mixed with a rattling noise like hail, 

God! art thou raining rocks from heaven? 

A flash! Christ! the lightning showed 
The mountain moving from his seat! 

Out! out into the slippery road! 
Into the wet with naked feet! 

No time for dress — for life! for life! 

No time for any word but this: 
The father grasped his boys — his wife 

Snatched her young babe — but not to kiss. 

And Mary with the younger girl, 
Barefoot and shivering in their smocks, 

Sped forth amid that angry whirl 
Of rushing waves and whelming rocks. 

For down the mountain's crumbling side, 
Full half the mountain from on high 

Came sinking, like the snows that slide 
From the great Alps about July. 

And with it went the lordly ash, 
And with it went the kingly pine, 

Cedar and oak amid the crash, 
Dropped down like clippings of the vine. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



Two rivers rushed — the one that broke 
His wonted bounds and drowned the land, 

And one that streamed with dust and smoke, 
A flood of earth, and stones and sand. 

Then for a time the vale was dry, 
The soil had swallowed up the wave; 

Till one star looking from the sky, 
A signal to the tempest gave: 

The clouds withdrew, the storm was o'er, 

Bright Aldabaran burned again; 
The buried river rose once more, 

And foamed along his gravelly glen. 

IV. 

At morn the men of Conway felt 

Some dreadful thing had chanced that night, 
And some by Breton woods who dwelt 

Observed the mountain's altered height. 

Old Crawford and the Fabyan lad 
Came down from Amonoosuc then, 

And passed the Notch — ah! strange and sad 
It was to see the ravaged glen. 

But having toiled for miles, in doubt, 
With many a risk of limb and neck, 

They saw, and hailed with joyful shout, 
The Willey House amid the wreck. 

That avalanche of stones and sand, 
Remembering mercy in its wrath, 

Had parted, and on either hand 
Pursued the ruin of its path. 

And there, upon its pleasant slope, 

The cottage, like a sunny isle 
That wakes the shipwrecked seaman's hope, 

Amid that horror seemed to smile. 

And still upon the lawn before, 

The peaceful sheep were nibbling nigh; 

But Farmer Willey at his door 
Stood not to count them with his eye. 

And in the dwelling— despair! 

The silent room! the vacant bed! 
The children's little shoes were there— 

But whither were the children fled? 



202 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



That day a woman's head, all gashed, 

Its long hair streaming in the flow, 
Went o'er the dam, and then was dashed 

Among the whirlpools down below. 

And farther down, by Saco's side, 

They fonnd the mangled forms of four, 
Held in an eddy of the tide : 

But Mary, she was seen no more. 

Yet never to this mournful vale 

Shall any maid, in summer time, 
Come without thinking of the tale 

I now have told you in my rhyme. 

And when the Willey House is gone, 

And its last rafter is decayed, 
Its history may yet live on 

In this your ballad that I made. 

There is little need now of any detailed or elaborate descrip- 
tion of the wildness and majesty of the Notch. Its tremendous, 
walls are touched with a terror, reflected from the Willey calamity, 
which is not explained by the abrupt battlements of Mount Willey 
and Mount Webster, and the purple bluff of Mount Willard, which 
stands in the way between them to forbid any passage through. 
It is well to remind visitors of the Crawford House, however, that 
the most impressive view of the Notch, after all, is not gained by 
riding up through it from Bartlett, but by riding clown into it from 
the Crawford House through the narrow gateway. This excursion 
should, without fail, be made from the Crawford House by all persons 
who have only ascended through it from Conway, by the stage. They 
will find a turn in the road, not a mile from the gateway, where three 
tremendous rocky hues sweep down to a focus from Mount Willard. 
Mount Webster, and Mount Willey. There is more character in this 
view than in the aspect of the open gorge at the Willey House. This 
is the Notch in bud, with its power concentrated and suggested to the 
imagination. At the Willey House it is all open; you stand between 
walls two miles long, and there are no ragged, nervous lines of rock 
running down from a cloud, or lying sharp against the blue distance. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



203 



Especially if one can take a walk or drive to the point we speak of, 
near the Crawford House, late in a clear afternoon, he will be doubly 
repaid by the sight of one of these mountain edges sweeping down in 
shadow to the haggard ruins at its base, and of the other ghstening in 
delicate and cheerful gold. A moonlight view at the same spot gives 



the contrast no less marked and impressive, in blackness on one side 
and silver on the other. 

But to know the Notch truly, one must take the drive from the 
Crawford House to the top of Mount Willard, and look down into it. 
A man stands there as an ant might stand on the edge of a huge 



204 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



tureen. We are lifted twelve hundred feet over the gulf on the 
brink of an almost perpendicular wall, and see the sides, Webster and 
Willey, rising on either hand eight hundred feet higher still, and 
running off two or three miles towards the Willey House. The road 
below is a mere bird-track. The long battlements that, from the 
front of the Willey House, tower on each side so savagely, from this 
point seem to flow down in charming curves to meet at the stream, 
which looks like the slender keel from which spring up the ribs that 
form the hold of a tremendous line-of-battle ship on the stocks. But 
perhaps we suggest a more exact and noble comparison if we speak of 
its resemblance to^ the trough of the sea in a storm. They are 
earth-waves, these curving walls that front each other. They were 
flung up thus, it may be, in the passion of the boiling land, and stif- 
fened before they could dash their liquid granite against each other, 
or subside by successive oscillations into calm. 

Mr. Ruskin has called attention by drawings in the fourth volume 
of the Modern Painters, to the picturesque characters of the lines of 
projection and escape among the debris of the Swiss mountains. 
They are almost always found to represent portions of infinite curves ; 
and in spite of breaks and disturbances, their natural unity is so 
sweet and perfect, that we have little difficulty in turning the 
sketches of them into the outlines of a bird's wing, slightly ruffled, but 
still graceful, and very different from any that we should suppose 
would be designed or drawn by a land-slide, or the rage of a torrent. 
Standing over the Notch, also, we are struck with the grace that 
curbed the rage of the murderous avalanches. We remember talk- 
ing once with a man who was very indignant at all poetic descriptions 
of natural scenery. "Now," saidjhe, "what can be honestly said 
of this Willey Notch, but. c Good Heavens, what a rough hole ! ' " 
Yet, on Mount Willard, it is the delicacy of slope and curve, and not 
the roughness, that is prominent. " Strength and beauty are in his 
sanctuary," and it is beauty which the savage forces serve at last. 
The waste of the mountains is not destructive, but creative. In the 
! ong run the ravage of the avalanche is beneficent. And here we 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



205 



see how, as its apparent cruelty is overruled by the law of love, its 
apparent disorder is overruled by the law of loveliness. " The hand 
of God, leading the wrath of the torrent to minister to the life of 
mankind, guides also its grim surges by the law of their delight ; and 
bridles the bounding rocks, and appeases the flying foam, till they He 
down in the same lines that lead forth the fibres of the down :n a 
cygnet's breast." 

The view of the summits of the Mount Washington range, too, 
from Mount Willard — the only point within some miles of the Notch 
where any of them can be seen — is a reward for the short excursion, 
almost as valuable as the view of the Gulf of the Notch. And let 
us again advise visitors to ascend Mount Willard if possible, late in 
the afternoon. They will then see one long wall of the Notch in 
shadow, and can watch it move slowly up the curves of the opposite 
side, displacing the yellow splendor, while the dim green dome of 
Washington is gilded by the sinking sun " with heavenly alchemy." 

Those who love mountain cascades, and especially those who love 
to climb to them through the undisturbed wilderness, will find now a 
new temptation to a drive into the Notch and through it from the 
Crawford House. The Flume and the Silver Cascade pouring down 
from Mount Webster have gladdened the eyes of almost all the 
visitors to the hotel, for they are visible from the road. The wind- 
ings and leapings of the Silver Cascade, whose downward path for 
more than a mile is in view, suggest the movement and in part the 
picture of Shelley's fines : — 

Arethusa arose 

From her couch of snows 
In the Acroceraunian mountains, — 

From cloud and from crag, 

With many a jag, 
Shepherding her bright fountains, 

She leapt down the rocks 

With her rainbow locks 
Streaming among the streams; — 

Her steps paved with green 

The downward ravine 
29 



206 



THE WHITE HILLS. 




Which slopes to the western gleams: 
And gliding and springing, 
She went ever singing, 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



207 



In murmurs as soft as sleep; 

The Earth seemed to love her, 

And Heaven smiled above her, 
As she lingered towards the deep. 

But a more wild and beautiful waterfall than any hitherto seen on 
the western side of the mountains, was discovered on Mount Willey 
in September, 1858, by Mr. Ripley of North Conway, and Mr. Por- 
ter of New York. An old fisherman had reported at the Crawford 
House that he had once seen a wonderful cascade on a stream that 
pours down that mountain, and empties into the Saco below the Wil- 
ley House. These gentlemen drove through the Notch to the sec- 
ond bridge below the Willey House, which crosses a stream with the 
unpoetical name of Cow Brook, and followed up this rivulet into the 
wild forest. An ascent of nearly two miles revealed to them the ob- 
ject of their search inclosed between the granite walls of a very 
steep ravine, whose cliffs, crowned with a dense forest of spruce, are 
singularly grand. They saw the cascade leaping first over four rocky 
stairways, each of them about six feet high, and then gliding, at an 
angle of forty-five degrees, a hundred and fifty feet with many grace- 
ful curves down a solid bed of granite into a pool below. The Cas- 
cade is about seventy-five feet wide at the base, and fifty at the 
summit. 

Exploring the stream nearly a mile higher, other falls were discov- 
ered, each one deserving especial notice, and one or two of most rare 
beauty. The finest of these upper falls was christened, we believe 
by the discoverers, the " Sparkling Cascade," and the larger one 
below, the " Sylvan-Glade Cataract." The brook itself has been 
named since in honor of Mr. Ripley, and the ravine, of Mr. Porter. 
We hope, however, that the name " Avalanche Brook," which we 
believe the explorers first gave to it, may be the permanent title of 
the stream, since it flows near the track of the fatal land-slide of 1826, 
and that Mr. Ripley's name may be transferred to the Cataract. 

Child of the clouds ! remote from every taint 
Of sordid industry thy lot is cast; 
Thine are the honors of the lofty waste; 




Not seldom, when with heat the valleys faint, 
Thy handmaid Frost with spangled tissue quaint 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



209 



Thy cradle decks;— to chant thy birth, thou hast 

No meaner Poet than the whistling Blast, 

And Desolation is thy Patron-Saint! 

She guards thee, ruthless Power! who would not spare 

Those mighty forests, once the bison's screen, 

Where stalked the huge deer to his shaggy lair 

Through paths and alleys roofed with sombre green; 

Thousands of years before the silent air 

Was pierced by whizzing shaft of hunter keen! 

Mr. Champney, who visited these falls about a fortnight after their 
discovery, is inclined to ascribe to them a nobler beauty than any 
others thus far known among the mountains. He describes the pic- 
turesque rock-forms as wonderful, and their richness in color and 
marking, in mosses and lichens, as more admirable than any others 
he has had the privilege of studying in the mountain region. And 
this cascade is only a sample, probably, of the uncelebrated beauties 
in the wilderness around the White Hills. With the exception of 
the hunter who gave the rumor of them at the Crawford House, they 
had not, probably, been looked upon by human eyes until Mr. Rip- 
ley and his party detected them. When Mr. Champney came down 
from his first study of their picturesqueness, to which we are indebted 
for the sketch here given, the comet was blazing above the jagged 
rocks of Mount Webster. And when that comet, on its preceding 
visit, hung over a world upon which no representatives of our race had 
appeared, to admire the majestic curve of its trail and to compute its 
orbit, the music of the waterfall was still flowing, it may be. 

Through the green tents, by eldest Nature drest, 

and its cool spray was sprinkled, as now, upon 

the unplanted forest floor, whereon 
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone; 
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, 
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. 

Indeed, only a short distance from the Crawford House, not more 
than a fifteen minutes' walk through the woods, a succession of little 
cascades were discovered, in the same month, which Nature had cun- 



210 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



ningly kept from human knowledge. These being so easily accessi 
ble, and yet so wild and charming, must add very much to the 
attractions of the hotel at the Notch. Perhaps it is these cascades 
that feed the " Basin," which has attained celebrity from Rev. Henry 
Ward Beecher's bath in it, after his return from the top of Mount 
Washington. Indeed, it is possible, that, without knowing it, Mr. 
Beecher was the discoverer of these falls. If so, they found their 
poet when they first gave hospitality in their crystal bowl to a human 
figure, as the following passage, which is as good as a bath to the 
mind, will abundantly testify : — 

" We went toward the Notch, and, turning to the right at the first 
little stream that let itself down from the mountains, we sought the 
pools in which we knew such streams kept their sweetest thoughts, 
expressing them by trout. The only difficulty was in the selection. 
This pool was deep, rock-rimmed, transparent, gravel-bottomed. The 
next was level-edged and rock-bottomed, but received its water with 
such a gush that it whirled around the basin in a liquid dance of bub- 
bles. The next one received a divided stream, one part coming over 
a shelving rock and sheeting down in white, while the other portion 
fell into a hollow and murmuring crevice, and came gurgling forth 
from the half-dark channel. Half way down, the rock was smooth 
and pleasant to the feet. In the deepest part was fine gravel and 
powdered mountain, commonly called sand. The waters left this 
pool even more beautifully than they entered it ; for the rock had 
been rounded and grooved, so that it gave a channel like the finest 
moulded lip of a water-vase ; and the moss, beginning below, had 
crept up into the very throat of the passage, and lined it completely^ 
giving to the clear water a green hue as it rushed through, whirling 
itself into a plexus of cords, or a kind of pulsating braid of water. 
This was my pool. It waited for me. How deliciously it opened its 
flood to my coming. It rushed up to every pore, and sheeted my skin 
with an aqueous covering, prepared in the mountain water-looms. Ah, 
the coldness ; — every drop was molten hail. It was the very brother 
of ice. At a mere hint of winter, it would change to ice again ! If 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



211 



the crystal nook was such a surprise of delight to me, what must I 
have been to it, that had, perhaps, never been invaded, unless by the / 
lip of a moose, or by the lithe and spotted form of sylvan trout ! The 
-drops and bubbles ran up to me and broke about my neck and ran 
laughing away, frolicking over the mossy margin, and I could hear 
them laughing all the way down below. Such a monster had never, 
perhaps, taken covert in the pure, pellucid bowl before ! 

" But this was the centre-part. Not less memorable was the 
fringe. The trees hung in the air on either side, and stretched their 
green leaves for a roof far above. The birch and alder, with here 
and there a silver fir, in bush form, edged the rocks on either side. 
As you looked up the stream, there opened an ascending avenue of 
cascades, dripping rocks bearded with moss, crevices filled with grass, 
or dwarfed shrubs, until the whole was swallowed up in the leaves 
and trees far above. But if you turned down the stream, then 
through a lane of richest green, stood the open sky, and lifted up 
against it, thousands of feet, Mount Willard, rocky and rent, or with 
but here and there a remnant of evergreens, sharp and ragged. The 
sun was behind it, and poured against its farther side his whole tide 
of light, which lapped over as a stream dashes over its bounds and 
spills its waters beyond. So it stood up over against this ocean of 
atmospheric gold, banked huge and rude against a most resplendent 
heaven ! As I stood donning my last articles of raiment, and wring- 
ing my over-wet hair, I saw a trout move very deliberately out from 
under a rock by which I had lain, and walk quietly across to the 
other side. As he entered the crevice, a smaller one left it and came 
as demurely across to his rock. It was evident that the old people 
had sent them out to see if the coast was clear, and whether any 
damage had been done. Probably it was thought that there had been 
a slide in the mountain, and that a huge icicle or lump of snow had 
plunged into their pool and melted away there. If there are pisca- 
tory philosophers below water half as wise as those above, this would 
be a very fair theory of the disturbance to which their mountain 
homestead had been subjected. As I had eaten of their salt, of 



212 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



course I respected the laws of hospitality, and no deceptive fly of 
mine shall ever tempt trout in a brook which begets pools so lovely, 
and in pools that yield themselves with such delicious embrace to the 
pleasures of a mountain bath." 

About five miles from the Crawford House, driving on a downward 
grade, on a road more pleasantly bordered with foliage, perhaps, than 
any other among the hills, we come to another resting-place for trav- 
ellers, called " The White Mountain House." The White Mountain 
range itself, though it is ascended from the public-house at the Notch, 
is not visible from that point. It is only when we drive out into the 
open plain, from which the huge mound rises, called " The Giant's 
Grave," not far from the White Mountain House, that the chain 
itself comes into view. Here every summit but one is in sight, and a 
very favorable opportunity is afforded for observing the effects of the 
land-slides, which seem to have plundered the lower mountains of the 
range of a large proportion of their substance, and have left traces of 
ravage in fantastic lines, deeply engraved upon their thin sides. 

The distance, in a straight line from the plain at the foot of The 
Giant's Grave to the top of Mount Washington, is nearly seven miles 
and a half. The height of the summit over this level area is less 
than five thousand feet, although it rises more than six thousand two 
hundred feet above the sea. A very noble view of Mount Washing- 
ton itself is gained by approaching near its base on this area, and 
seeing it separated from the rest of the ridge. 

The mighty pyramids of stone, 
That, wedge-like, cleave the desert airs, 
When nearer seen and better known, 
Are but gigantic flights of stairs. 

The distant mountains, that up rear 
Their solid bastions to the skies, 
Are crossed by pathways, that appear 
As we to higher levels rise. 

From the Notch, the ascent of Mount Washington is made by mounting 
gradually the steps of Clinton, Pleasant, Franklin and Munroe, — each 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



218 



rising higher than the last, and all of them destitute of trees, — which 
lead°to the crest of the ridge. From the White Mountain House 
there is a carriage-road on which visitors are carried some ways up 
on Mount Washington itself, to within about two miles of the summit. 
Here horses are taken for the remainder of the ascent. The views, 
by both roads, when the day is clear, give compensation that makes 
the toil a trifle. But we must reserve what we have to say of the 
views which the summit gives, for the next chapter, and we have no 
intention of assuming to decide which of the three routes by which 
the ascent is made is preferable. 




The rambles in the neighborhood of the White Mountain House are 
exceedingly interesting. There are many hills of moderate height 
which may be scaled, from which views of the great range are gained, 
that, especially towards evening, are very impressive and rich. We 
must remember that the neighborhood of this hotel supplies the near- 

30 < 



214 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



est access to the White Mountain range on the western side ; in fact 
it is the only point where, from the level of the road, the range is 
even visible, after we leave North Conway. 

Then, too, the falls and cliffs of the Ammonoosuc lie not far from 
the hotel. This river, one of the principal feeders of the Connecticut, 
is undoubtedly the wildest stream in New England. The water, which 
it receives from the cone of Mount Washington, and from the Blue 
Ponds, near the summit of Mount Munroe, dashes down the mountain 
side, often in leaps of thirty to forty feet at a time, — pours over the 
gray granite shelves near the White Mountain House, where, after 
every heavy rain the water is tossed into heaps as high as haycocks, — 
catches only for a moment the deep shadows of the balsam fir, white 
pine, and spruce, which the grand cliffs of its right bank throw upon 
it, and will not stop to play with the flickering lights and shades that 
dance upon its ripples through the birches that rustle on the flat 
ledges which guard it on the left, — but in a hurry along its whole 
course of thirty miles, during which it descends over five thousand 
feet, is calmed in the current of the sober Connecticut that moves 
with a lordly leisure towards the sea. 

Fast by the river's trickling source I sit, 

And view the new-born offspring of the skies ; 

Cradled on rocky felt, a nursling yet, 
Fed by his mother-cloud's soft breast, he lies. 

But lo! the heaven-born streamlet swelling flows, 
Dreaming e'en now of fame, the woods adown, 

And as his bosom heaves with longing throes, 
His wavelets rock the mirrored sun and moon. 

And now he scorns beneath the firs to creep, 
Or hemmed by narrow mountain walls to flow, 

But tumbles headlong down the rocky steep, 
And foams along the pebbly vale below. 

" Come on! come on!" he every brookling hails, 
" Here suns exhaust and sands absorb your force, 
Ye brothers come! through smiling fields and dales 
I lead you down to your primeval source." 



THE SACO VALLEY 



215 



The children of the rain obey, and hurl 
Applause, as they the } T oung adventurer meet, 

With kingly pride his swelling billows curl, 
And woods and rocks fail prostrate at his feet. 

Now to the plains, m triumph he descends 

With dark blue train and state that homage claim, 

Parched fields his breath revives, as on he bends 
His course, baptizing nations with his name. 




And bai'ds in strain divine his praises sing, 
Tall ships are on his bosom borne away, 

Proud cities court him, flowery meadows cling 
Around his knees and sue him to delay. 

But they detain him not — with ceaseless haste 
Fair fields and gilded towns he hurries by 

Nor slacks his tide impetuous, till at last 
He on his father's bosom falls to die. 



216 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



The name of Crawford is associated with the Giant's Grave and 
the neighboring meadow. And we ought not to leave the spot un- 
til we have paid respect to the memory of the early settlers of the 
wilderness which is upborne on the flanks of the White Hills.. We 
can now breakfast in Boston, and reach the base of Mount Washing- 
ton, on the eastern or the western side, in season for supper. It is dim- 
cult for us to conceive the hardships of the pioneers who, seventy or 
eighty years ago, invaded " the forest primeval," and determined to 
wring a livelihood from lands upon which, at evening or morning, the 
shadow of Mount Washington was flung. Whether we read the 
accounts of the first settlers in Jackson, Conway, Bartlett, Albany, 
Bethlehem or Shelburne, the stories are essentially the same. The 
perils of isolation, the ravages of wild beasts, the wrath of the moun- 
tain torrents, the obstacles to intercourse which the untamed wilder- 
ness interposed, — every form of discomfort and of danger was visibly 
threatened by the great mountains to guard their immediate slopes 
and valleys from intrusion, but in vain. Whether we study history 
on a large or a small scale, we find that the movements of population, 
carrying the threads of civilization to new districts, new climates, and 
foreign shores, furnish the most mystic chapters in the revelation of 
an Intellect that works through human folly as through human wisdom 
for generous ends. 

When there was so much land within the bounds of civilization 
already unoccupied and unclaimed, what could have induced families 
eighty years ago, to move from a great distance in order to colonize the 
banks of the Ellis River, or the wild borders of the upper Ammonoo- 
suc, or the glen through which above North Conway the Saco rushes ? 
The very horses of the settlers on the Bartlett meadows, in 1777, 
would not stay, but struck over the hills due south, in the direction 
of Lee from which they had been taken. They all perished in the 
forest before the succeeding spring. And many of the pioneers, as 
if to taste hardship in its bitterest flavor, started for their new homes 
in the winter. One couple travelled eighty miles on snow-shoes, the 
husband carrying a pack of furniture on his back, in order to enjoy 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



217 



the privilege of nearly starving in Conway. Joseph Pinkham and 
his family removed to Jackson in 1790, when the snow was five feet 1 
deep on a level. Their hand-sled, on which their provisions, furniture, 
and clothing were packed, was drawn by a pig which they compelled 
to work in harness. John Pendexter and wife made a triumphal entry 
into Bartlett in the winter. She rode a large part of the way from 
Portsmouth, on a feeble horse, with a feather-bed under her and a 
child in her arms, while the husband dragged the rest of their worldly 
wealth over the snow. Their child was cradled in a sap-trough, and 
became the mother of a family, " all of whom do honor to their 
parentage." 

Several of the earliest settlers lived for years without any neigh- 
bors within many miles. The pioneer in the village of Jackson 
was obliged to go ten miles to a mill, and would carry a bushel of 
corn on his shoulder, and take it back in meal, without removing the 
burden during the whole distance ; and Ethan Crawford tells us that 
his grandfather went once to a lower settlement for a bushel of salt, 
the scarcity of which produced a great deal of distress and sickness 
in the cabins of the forest, and returned with it on his back, eighty 
miles through the woods. And it was not from the lack of salt alone 
that these bold people suffered. Not all the families scattered along 
the course of a mountain stream owned cows, and could have so rich 
a diet as milk-porridge. Water and meal, with dried trout with- 
out salt, were their dependence when game was shy, or long storms 
prevented hunting. Sometimes when famine threatened, they were 
obliged to send deputations thirty, fifty, sixty miles to purchase grain. 
And we read that now and then, in times of great scarcity, the most 
hardy settlers wore a wide strap of skin, which as they grew more 
emaciated was drawn tighter, to mitigate the gnawings of hunger, that 
they might hold out till relief came. Often we are told the buckle 
was drawn almost to the last hole. In the early history of Conway, 
we read of a man who had tightened his strap thus, and was lying 
down thinking that he should never rise again. A neighbor, almost as 
weak, and who did not own a gun, crept to his door to say that a 



218 



THE WHITE HILLS 



moose was not far from the cabin. The news excited the famishing 
pioneer so that he was able to cut a new hole in the strap and gird it 
tighter. He then crept out and was fortunate enough, by resting 
the gun, to kill the moose. The skeleton men soon had a bountiful 
repast, and it is pleasant to read the assurance that before thirty-six 
hours their straps would hardly reach round them. 

Besides occasional famine, these families were tried by the fresh- 
ets that tore up their rude bridges, swept off their barns, and even 
floated their houses on the meadows. On the Saco intervale, in the 
year 1800, a heavy rain swelled the river, so that it floated every 
cabin and shed that had been built on it, and bore them quietly down 
the current, " the cocks crowing merrily as they floated on." Let 
us be grateful for this note of cheer in the story. The year before 
this the few settlers in Bethlehem attempted to build a bridge over 
the Ammonoosuc. The laborers, who worked all day in the water, 
had nothing to eat but milk-porridge, which was carried to them hot 
by their wives. At last they were obliged to cut and burn wood 
enough in the forest to make a large load of potash, which they sent 
to Concord, Mass., a distance of a hundred seventy miles, to be bar- 
tered for provisions. The teamster was absent four weeks, and dur- 
ing part of this time the settlers cooked green chocolate roots and a 
few other wild plants, to save them from starvation. 

When the settlers accumulated anything worth stealing which the 
mountains could not destroy by natural ravage, the bears were un- 
loosed upon them. If nuts and berries failed, and there was a 
famine in the woods, down came an irruption of black barbarians 
upon the cattle, especially upon the pigs. Often a huge bear would 
make his appearance near a settler's house, steal a good-sized pig 
with his forepaws, and run off with him, eating as he ran. And 
sometimes the personal contests of the squatters with these aboriginal 
tenants, would be such as are decidedly more pleasant in history than 
in experience. What a charming surprise, for instance, to an early 
settler under Chocorua, when he ascended a hill near his cabin, on a 
very dark night, and came suddenly into the embrace, more warm 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



219 



than friendly, of a big bear that was waiting for him at the top. 
Then commenced a wrestling-match which it is delightful to contem- / 
plate. The bear was an adept in hugging, but the man understood 
the art of tripping, and by a dexterous movement threw the bear 
from her feet. The two rolled down the hill in the darkness, over 
and over, and tumbled into a pond at the foot. Here the bear let 
go, and both, crawling wet out of the water, were content to consider 
it a drawn battle, and retired to their respective places of abode. 

The first things, of course, which the settlers did when a dozen 
families had collected within the compass of a few miles, were to 
organize a church, and establish a school. By the time two dozen 
families were gathered in a valley, it was almost certain that a second 
church of a different sect would be started. Ministers toiled all the 
week on their meadow or wood-lot, and, if they did not preach with- 
out notes, wrote their sermons at night by the blaze of pitch-knots. 
The school-house was built of rough hemlock logs, covered with rude 
boards and the bark of trees, and was lighted by two or three panes 
of glass placed singly in its wall. " The something that answered for 
a fireplace and chimney was constructed of poor bricks and rocks, 
together with sticks, laid up so as to form what was called a ' cat- 
ting,' to guide the smoke." And to this cabin the scholars went in 
paths cut through the thick forests. Yet in many an instance the 
passion for learning was kindled within these rude hovels as intensely 
as it has ever been in the most shapely academy. A son of one of 
these pioneers, now a clergyman, who attended such a school, assures 
us that many an excited contest in spelling and ciphering took place 
within its walls, and that " many tears have been shed, and bursts of 
applause shaken the very bark on its roof at the successful perform- 
ance of the 4 Conjuror' and 6 Neighbor Scrapewell.'" Such rough 
churches, and wigwam schools, have been the cell-germs from which 
the organizing power of civilization in our cold north has poured. 

From one of these " locations," or " grants," the story runs that 
a man once made his appearance in the State Legislature, and took 
a seat. He was asked for proof that he was the choice of the people. 



220 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



" Whom could they put up against me ? " he said ; "I am the only 
man in my town." His claim to a seat was allowed. There must 
have been a few more inhabitants in the settlement in upper Coos 
which was legally warned to have training. After the officers were 
chosen, ' there was but one soldier. And he said, "Gentlemen, I 
hope you will not be too severe in drilling me, as I may be needed 
another time. I can form a solid column, but it will rack me shock 
ingly to display." 

The hardships of which we have been writing are forcibly sug- 
gested at the Giant's Grave. Abel Crawford lived in a log hut 
on that mound some months, alone. But in 1792, the Rosebrook 
family moved into it when it was buried in snow, so that the entrance 
to it could be found with difficulty. For six weeks neither the sun, 
nor the heat from the cabin, would make a drop of water fall from the 
eaves. During the whole winter they were dependent upon the game 
they could catch, and often, from fear that the father might return 
empty, the children would be sent down through the Notch twelve 
miles, to Abel Crawford's, to obtain something for sustenance. Good 
Mrs. Rosebrook often lay awake late in the night, waiting anxiously 
for the children's return through the snows and winds of the awful 
Notch, and when they arrived would " pour out her love in prayer and 
thankfulness to her heavenly Father, for preserving them, and that 
she was permitted to receive them again to her humble mansion." 

Abel Crawford, in his old age, was never tired of telling stories 
of the hardships and adventures of the pioneers. He was well 
named the ' ; veteran pilot " of the hills ; for he was the first guide 
that introduced visitors to the grandeur of the scenery so easily 
reached now, and he saw the gradual process of civilization applied 
to the wilderness between Bethlehem and Upper Bartlett. When he 
was about twenty-five years old, he wandered through the region 
alone for months, dressed in tanned mooseskin, lord of the 

Cradle, hunting-ground, and bier 
Of wolf and otter, bear and deer. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



221 



He assisted in cutting the first footpath to the ridge, and at 
seventy-five, in the year 1840, he rode the first horse that climbed 
the cone of Mount Washington. During the last ten years of his 
fife he was a noble object of interest to thousands of visitors from all 
parts of the United States, for whom the whole tour of the hills had 
been smoothed into a pastime and luxury. He died at eighty-five. 




He had been so long accustomed to greet travellers in the summer, 
that he longed to have his life spared till the visitors made their 
appearance in Bartlett, on their way to the Notch. He used to sit 
in the warm spring clays, supported by his daughter, his snow-white 
hair falling to his shoulders, waiting for the first ripple of that large 

31 



222 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



tide which he had seen increasing in volume for twenty years. Not 
long after the stages began to carry their summer freight by his 
door, he passed away. We have a very pleasant recollection of 
the venerable appearance of the patriarch in front of his house 
under Mount Crawford, in the year 1849, when we made our first 
visit to the White Hills. A large bear was chained to a pole near 
the house, and the stage load of people had gathered around, equally 
interested in seeing a specimen of the first settlers and of the aborig- 
inal tenants of the wilderness. The old man handed the writer a 
biscuit, and said : " Give it to the beast, young man, and then tell 
when you go back to Boston, that a bear ate out of your hand up in 
these mountains." The difference between an experience in the 
mountain region, as our party were then enjoying it for a week, and 
his early acquaintance with its hardships and solitude, was the differ- 
ence between feeding a fettered bear with a biscuit, and wrestling in 
a tight hug with a hungry one alone in the forest. 

In 1803 the first rude public-house for straggling visitors to the 
White Mountains, was erected on the Giant's Grave itself. And in 
1819 the first rough path was cut through the forest on the side of 
the Mount Washington range to the rocky ridge. Ethan Allen 
Crawford, who lived on the Giant's Grave, marked and cleared this 
path in connection with Abel Crawford, his father, who was living 
eight miles below the Notch. A few years after, Ethan spotted and 
trimmed a footpath on the side of Mount Washington itself, along 
essentially the same route by which carriages are driven now from 
the White Mountain House to the Cold Spring. And it ought not to 
be forgotten that it was by Ethan Crawford, that the first protection 
for visitors was built under the cone of Mount Washington. It was 
a stone hut, furnished with a small stove, an iron chest, a roll of sheet 
lead, and a plentiful supply of soft moss and hemlock boughs for 
bedding. The lead was the cabin-register on which visitors left their 
names engraved by a piece of sharp iron. Every particle of this 
camp and all the furniture, was swept off on the night of the storm 
by which the Willey family were overwhelmed. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



223 



Noble Ethan Crawford ! we must pause a few moments before the 
career of this stalwart Jotun of the mountains, in the story of whose 
fortunes the savageness and hardships of the wilderness and the 
heroic qualities they nurse are shown in one picture. He was born 
in 1792. His early childhood was passed in a log hut a few miles 
from the Notch ; and in his manhood, after a fire in 1818 had burned 
the comfortable house on the Giant's Grave, he lived again in a log 
house with but one apartment and no windows. In 1819, he had 
built a rough house of a larger size, with a stone chimney, in which 
during the cold spells of winter, more than a cord of wood would be 
burned in twenty-four hours. He tells us that he never owned a hat, 
mittens, or shoes until he was thirteen years old ; yet could harness 
and unharness horses in the biting winter weather with bare head, 
hands, and feet, " and not mind, or complain of the cold, as I was 
used to it." As to what is called comfort in the lowlands, he found 
that 

Naught the mountain yields thereof, 
But savage health and sinews tough. 

He grew to be nearly seven feet in height, and rejoiced in a 
strength which he would show in lifting five hundred weight into a 
boat ; in dragging a bear that he had muzzled to his house, that he 
might be tamed ; or in carrying a buck home alive, upon his shoul- 
ders. What a flavor of wild mountain life, what vivid suggestions 
of the closest tug of man with nature, — of raw courage and muscle 
against frost and gale, granite and savageness, do we find in his ad- 
ventures and exploits ; — his leaping from a load of hay in the Notch 
when a furious gust made it topple, and catching it on his shoulder 
to prevent it from falling over a precipice ; his breaking out the 
road, for miles, through the wild winter drifts ; his carrying the mail 
on his back, after freshets, to the next settlement, when a horse could 
not cross the streams ; his climbings of Mount Washington with a 
party of adventurers, laden like a pack-horse, without suffering more 
fatigue than ordinary men would feel after a level walk of ten miles ; 
his returns from the summit bearing some exhausted member of a 

31* 



224 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



party on his back ; his long, lonely tramps, on snow-shoes, after 
moose, and his successful shooting of a pair of the noble beasts, two 
miles back of the Notch, about dark, and sleeping through the cold 
night in their warm skins, undismayed by the wolf howls that sere- 
naded him ! 

The tribe of bears in a circumference of twenty miles knew him 
well. Many a den he made desolate of its cubs by shaking them, 
like apples, from trees into which they would run to escape him : then 
tying his hankerchief around their mouths he would take them home 
under his arm to tame them. Many a wrestle did he have with full 
grown ones who would get their feet in his traps. Scarcely a week 
passed while he lived among the mountains which was not marked by 
some encounter with a bear. 

With the wolves also, he carried on a war of years. So long as he 
kept sheep he could not frighten the wolves into cessation of hostili- 
ties. The marauders showed the skill of a surgeon in their rapine 
and slaughter. Ethan found, now and then, a sheepskin a few rods 
from his house with no mark upon it except a smooth slit from the 
throat to the fore legs, as though it had been cut with a knife. The 
legs had been taken off as far as the lowest joint ; all the flesh had 
been eaten out clean, and only the head and backbone had been left 
attached to the pelt. When the feat was accomplished, the wolves 
would give him notice by a joint howl, which the Washington range 
would echo from their " bleak concave," so that all the woods seemed 
filled with packs of the fierce pirates. Once in a December night 
four wolves made a descent upon his sheep, which fled among the 
carriages near the house, for safety. Ethan went out in his night- 
dress and faced them in the bright moonlight. He had no weapon, 
and so they rose on their haunches to hear what he might have to 
say. He harangued them, to little purpose for some time, and at 
last " observed to them that they had better make off with them- 
selves," with the intimation that an axe or gun would be soon 
forthcoming. They then turned about and marched away, " giving 
us some of their lonesome music." But Ethan found, the next 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



225 



morning, that they had enjoyed his hospitality, by digging up carcasses 
of bears back of the stable, and gnawing them close to the bone. 

He thinned the sables from the region by his traps. The banks 
of the neighboring brooks he depopulated of otters. Yet he had 
an affection for all the creatures of the wilderness, and loved to have 
young wolves, and tame bucks, and well-behaved bears, and domesti- 
cated sable, around his premises : while the collecting of rare alpine 
plants from the snowy edges of the ravines on the ridge, where Na- 
ture had ' ; put them according to their merits," was " a beautiful 
employment, which I always engaged in with much pleasure." But 
his most remarkable adventures were his contests with the wild-cats, 
the fiercest animals which the mountains harbored. The hills that 
slope towards the Ammonoosuc were cleared by him of these furious 
freebooters, that made great havoc with his geese and sheep. His 
greatest exploit ^vas his capture of one of these creatures in a tree 
within the Xotch, by a lasso made of birch sticks, which he twisted 
on the spot. He slipped it over the wild-cat's neck, and jerked the 
animal down ten feet. The noose broke. He repaired it instantly, 
fastened it once more around the creature's head, pulled him down 
within reach, and after a severe battle, killed him. He seems to 
have possessed a magic fetter, like that which the dark elves of 
the Scandinavian myths wove to bind the wolf Fenrir, and which 
was plaited of six things into a cord smooth and soft as a silken 
string : the beards of women, the noise of a cat's footfall, the roots 
of stones, the sinews of bears, the spittle of birds, and the breath of 
fish. 

What extremes in Ethan's experience ! He entertained many of 
the wisest and most distinguished of the country under his rude roof, 
and was gratefully remembered for his hospitality, and his faithful 
service in guiding them to the great ridge. He would come home 
from a bear-fight, to find in his house, perhaps, " a member of Con- 
gress, Daniel Webster," who desired his assistance on foot to the 
summit of Mount Washington. There was a couple whose talk would 
have been worth hearing ! Ethan says that they went up " without 



226 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



meeting anything worthy of note, more than was common for me to 
find, but to him things appeared interesting. And when we arrived 
there, he addressed himself in this way, saying : £ Mount Washing- 
ton, I have come a long distance, and have toiled hard to arrive at 
your summit, and now you give me a cold reception. I am ex- 
tremely sorry, that I shall not have time enough to view this grand 
prospect which lies before me, and nothing prevents but the uncom- 
fortable atmosphere in which you reside.' " How accurately Ethan 
reported the address, we cannot certify ; but as the rostrum was the 
grandest, and the audience the smallest, which was ever honored 
with a formal speech by the great orator, the picture should not be 
lost. The snow from a sudden squall froze upon the pair as they 
descended the cone. The statesman was evidently interested in his 
guide, for Ethan says that, " the next morning, after paying his bill, 
he made me a handsome present of twenty dollars." 

And Ethan's life was perpetually set in remarkable contrasts. 
From struggles with wild-cats in the forests of Cherry Mountain, to 
the society of his patient, faithful, pious wife, was a distance as wide 
as can be indicated on the planet. Mount Washington looked down 
into his uncouth domicile, and saw there 

Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart. 

Lucy taught him how to meet calamity without despair and repining. 
When his house burned down, and left him with no property but one 
new cheese and the milk of the cows, his wife, though sick, was not 
despondent. When his debts, caused by this fire, pressed heavy, 
and he staggered under difficulties as he never did under the heavi- 
est load in the forest, she assured him that Providence had some 
wise purpose in their trouble. When his crops were swept off, and 
his meadows filled with sand by freshets, Lucy's courage was not 
crushed. He knocked down a swaggering bully, once, on a muster- 
field in Lancaster, and was obliged to promise Lucy that he would 
never give way to an angry passion again. When death invaded 
their household, and his own powerful frame was so shaken by dis- 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



227 



ease and pain, that a flash of lightning, as he said, seemed to run 
from his spine to the ends of his hair, his wife's religious patience 
and trust proved an undrainable cordial. And after he became 
weakened by sickness, if he staid out long after dark, Lucy would 
take a lantern and go into the woods to search for him. He was put 
into jail at last in Lancaster for debt. Lucy wrote a pleading letter 
to his chief creditor to release him, but without effect. This, says 
Ethan, " forced me, in the jail, to reflect on human nature, and it 
overcame me, so that I was obliged to call for the advice of phy- 
sicians and a nurse." Other forms of adversity, too, beset him, — 
opposition to his public-house when travellers became more plentiful, 
which destroyed his prospects of profit ; the breaking of a bargain 
for the sale of his lands ; foul defamation of his character to the post- 
office authorities in Washington, from whom" he held an appointment. 
Broken in health, oppressed by pecuniary burdens, and with shat- 
tered spirits, he left the plateau at the base of Mount Washington 
for a more pleasant home in Vermont, accompanied by Lucy, whose 
faith did not allow her to murmur. But he experienced hard fortune 
there, too, and returned to die, within sight of the range, an old 
man, before he had reached the age of fifty-six years. 

Since the breaking up of his home on the Giant's Grave, the 
mountains have heard no music which they have echoed so heartily 
as the windings of his horn, and the roar of the cannon which he 
used to load to the muzzle, that his guests might hear a park of 
artillery reply. Few men that have ever visited the mountains have 
done more faithful work or borne so much adversity and suffering. 
The cutting of his heel-cord with an axe, when he was chopping out 
the first path up Mount Washington, was a type of the result to him- 
self of his years of toil in the wilderness ; and his own quaint reflec- 
tion on that wound, which inflicted lameness upon him for months, is 
the most appropriate inscription, after the simple words, " an honest 
man," that could be reared over his grave : " So it is that men 
suffer various ways in advancing civilization, and through God, man- 
kind are indebted to the labors of men in many different spheres of 



228 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



life." And does he not have part in this general eulogy by Mr 
Emerson ? 

Many hamlets sought I then, 

Many farms of mountain men; 

Found I not a minstrel seed, 

But men of hone, and good at need. 

Rallying round a parish steeple 

Nestle warm the highland people, 

Coarse and boisterous, yet mild, 

Strong as giant, slow as child, 

Smoking in a squalid room 

Where yet the westland breezes come. 

Close hid in those rough guises lurk 

Western magians, — here they work. 

Sweat and season are their arts, 

Their talismans are ploughs and carts; 

And well the youngest can command 

Honey from the frozen land; 

With sweet hay the wild swamp adorn, 

Change the running sand to corn; 

For wolves and foxes, lowing herds, 

And for cold mosses, cream and curds; 

Weave wood to canisters and mats; 

Drain sweet maple juice in vats. 

No bird is safe that cuts the air 

From their rifle or their snare; 

No fish, in river or in lake, 

But their long hands it thence will take; 

And the country's flinty face, 

Like wax, their fashioning skill betrays, 

To fill the hollows, sink the hills, 

Bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills, 

And fit the bleak and howling place 

For gardens of a finer race. 

There is a tradition that an Indian maniac once stood on the 
Giant's Grave, and swinging a blazing pitch-pine torch, which he 
had kindled at a tree struck by lightning, shouted in the storm the 
prophecy, — 

The Great Spirit whispered in my ear 
No pale-face shall take deep root here. 

Fabyan's large hotel, built at the foot of the Giant's Grave, has been 
burned to the ground. Two public-houses on the mound itself have 
been destroyed ; the meadow has been ravaged by freshets ; and 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



229 



two hotels at the gate of the Notch have also been consumed by fire. 
Were these fires kindled by sparks from the dusky prophet's torch ? 
We are happy that we can leave this question with those of our 
readers who love the atmosphere of wild traditions around mountains, 
better than the evening light that glows on their tops, or the rare 
flowers and plants that climb their ravines. 

And we must not forget to speak of the range, before we lose sight 
of it here, as a soaring garden of plants, a vast conservatory of Flora. 
We are told that the distinct zones of vegetation on this range are 
scarcely surpassed on the flanks of Mount Etna or the Pyrenees. 
Mount Washington is a gigantic thermometer of botanic life, and the 
creative forces, enfeebled as they ascend towards the zero of perpet- 
ual snow, pass by degrees entirely out of the temperate lines, and 
indicate by plant, lichen, or moss, the levels of Lapland, Siberia, and 
Labrador. 

But let us not anticipate any of the valuable details of the chap- 
ter on the vegetation of the mountains from a thoroughly competent 
hand, with which we are able to enrich this volume. Prof. Ed- 
ward Tuckerman, of Amherst College, has been for many years a 
lover of the scenery, an explorer of the wildest glens and gorges, and 
a student of the botanic riches of the Mount Washington range. Mr. 
Emerson's description of a forest seer may be well applied to him. 

A lover true, who knew by heart 
Each joy the mountain dales impart; 
It seemed that Nature could not raise 
A plant in any secret place, 
In quaking bog, or snowy hill, 
Beneath the grass that shades the rill, 
Under the snow, between the rocks, 
In damp fields known to bird and fox, 
But he would come in the very hour 
It opened in its virgin bower, 
As if a sunbeam showed the place, 
And tell its long descended race. 

The chapter which follows has been prepared by Prof. Tuckerman 
for these pages. 32 



230 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



THE VEGETATION OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 

The predominant Life in mountains is always Vegetable Life. 
This, in itself, or in its manifold bearings on the landscape, is sure to 
be beheld and felt, — and studied, too, by those who seek the inner 
truth of the outward, — 

Unfolded still the more, more visible, 
The more we know. 

In the higher, alpine tracts, there is little beside this. A hare, 
two or three birds, and a very few insects, are all the animals as yet 
certainly known to inhabit the highest region of the White Hills.* 
But that region is furnished with a peculiar and interesting vegeta- 
tion ; and the relations of this vegetation to that of the lower parts of 
the mountains, and of the low country, may first occupy, very briefly, 
our attention. 

No one can observe carefully the plants of a high mountain, with- 
out seeing that those which occur in the higher parts are, to a con- 
siderable degree, different from those at the foot ; and still further 
that this difference presents itself, with more or less evident distinct- 
ness, as a series of zones, each with vegetable features of its own. 
And these distinct zones of vegetation on mountains have been found 
by botanists to correspond with a like succession in the low country, 
one set of plants being followed here, in like manner, by another, as 
we go northward, and that which characterizes the highest mountain 

* " Fourteen species of insects " were caught by Dr. J. W. Bobbins on the summit of I 
Mount Adams, and some water insects in the little alpine lake under the peak, towards 
Mount Madison. And he saw on the summit a small quadruped, " probably a mouse," 
(MS. journal.) Gray squirrels have more than once been seen on the rocky summit of 
Mount Washington. Several butterflies, two of them of much rarity, occur, about the 
upper regions. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



231 



region, below perpetual snow, occurring again m the low country, 
as soon as we reach a sufficiently northern latitude. It is thus that 
an alp may offer a reduced, but on that very account more easily 
estimated picture of a number of differing (perhaps vast) districts 
of vegetable life, or be compared, as it is by Mr. A. De Candolle, to 
a series of degrees of latitude condensed ; in which the same phe- 
nomena which are dilated, so to say, in the plain country over 
hundreds of leagues, are compressed within certain hundreds of 
yards.* The study of these remarkable conditions of plant life has 
been pursued with much attention in Europe, and has furnished, or at 
least suggested, a large part of the most important knowledge that we 
have, of Botanical Geography ; but the limitation of the region has 
complicated as well as facilitated inquiry, and a great deal, therefore, 
still remains to be done, even where the questions at issue have been 
longest considered.! 

Here, the succession of zones was observed by Cutler in 1784, and 
its more general features stated at length by Bigelow in 1816 ; — 
but an approximate determination of the superior and inferior limits 
of species has yet to be accomplished. J and will doubtless require, as 
it will reward, the observation of many years. 

The immediate base of the highest group of the White Mountains 
has an elevation at the Giant's Grave, on the west side, and at the 
Glen House, on the east, of about sixteen hundred feet. This height 
increases, as we approach the base of Mount Clinton, at the gate of 
the Notch, where it exceeds eighteen hundred feet, and probably falls 
off on the north side. Many trees, and other plants, are thus exclu- 
ded. The linden appears only as a very rare (possibly introduced) 

* A. De Cand. Geogr. Bot. I. p. 249. t 3 Ibid. 

X Even in Europe these limits have been well verified as yet, in only a very small num- 
ber of species. Ibid. I. p. 268. It is evident that the above remarks apply only to moun- 
tains of a certain height; and that mountains in warmer latitudes must be proportionally 
higher, to exhibit the interesting phenomena of which mention has been made. The few 
hundred feet by which the highest summits of the Carolina mountains surpass Mount 
Washington, are far from sufficient to give them the same importance in Botanical Geog- 
raphy. 



232 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



tree on the warm burnt lands of Mount Crawford. The sumachs are 
wanting. The vine is unknown, as are the hawthorns, and the Can- 
ada plum. There is no sassafras ; nor slippery elm ; nor hackberry ; 
nor buttonwood ; nor hickory ; and the butternut comes no nearer 
than ten or fifteen miles off. Only the red oak occurs, and that below 
the Notch. The chestnut is wanting. Beech begins only below the 
Notch on the west side, but is found a little higher on the east. The 
black birch is unknown, as is pitch pine. Red pine occurs about 
Mount Crawford, but not beyond, northward, till we pass the moun- 
tains. The larch, the arbor vitse, and the junipers, occur scarcely at 
all, except at the outskirts. 

Other trees and herbs approach near to the mountains, but cease 
before we ascend them. Such are white maple, along the rivers ; 
red maple, in swampy lands not far from the mountains on the west 
side, and coming still nearer on the east ; black cherry, in the inter- 
vals, with the choke cherry ; juneberry, as a tree (called sugar-tree), 
at the foot of Mount Crawford ; the white and the black ash ; the 
American elm, following the rivers, and ascending the Ammonoosuc 
three or four miles above Giant's Grave ; the red oak, reaching per- 
haps highest in the woods between the Notch and Mount Crawford ; 
the hornbeam, in the intervals, not far from Mount Crawford ; the 
black birch, so far as it occurs in the immediate neighborhood of the 
hills ; and the balsam (and perhaps also the balm of Gilead) poplar. 

And this brings us to the ascent. The country people recognize 
Loosely two of the zones of which mention has been made above, — 
distinguishing the hard wood, or green growth, which is the lower 
forest from the black growth, or upper forest, in which evergreens 
are predominant; and beside these, botanists designate the highest, 
bald district, with the heads of ravines descending from it, as the 
alpine region, and have sometimes spoken of a small tract, interme- 
diate between the last two, but still very imperfectly characterized, 
as the subalpine region. Let us traverse these regions. The place 
where we enter, with its elevation and other features, will determine 
the character of the forest at the very foot. If it be a cold moun- 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



233 



tain swamp, as between Giant's Grave and Mount Clinton, there will 
be less variety of trees, and the evergreens will play a larger part, 
even at the base. But as we ascend, these differences become less 
striking, and at length greatly disappear. Sovereign of trees of the 
lower forest was the white pine. Douglas, the author of " The Pres- 
ent State of the British Settlements in North America," 1749-1753, 
speaks of a white pine cut near Dunstable in 1736, " straight and 
sound, seven feet eight inches in diameter at the butt."* Before the 
Revolution, all these trees, excepting those growing in townships 
granted before 1722, were accounted the King's property in New 
Hampshire, (as they were also in Maine,) and the books of the royal 
contractors for masts furnished Douglas and Belknap with some inter- 
esting items of the size and value of the sticks thus sent home. The 
dimensions of those mentioned by Belknap as exported by Mark 
Hunking Wentworth, Esq., run from 25 to 37 inches through; and 
Colonel Partridge, it appears, sent home a few of 38 inches, and two 
of 42 inches ; these being all hewn before they were measured. And 
Dr. Dwight heard from a gentleman of Lancaster that he had seen 
a white pine which measured two hundred and sixty-four feet in 
height. f Straight columns of this princely tree rise here and there, 
and spread the few strong limbs which make its crown, above the 
lower forest ; but the day of its pride, still witnessed to by the 
enduring stumps (" it is a common saying that ' no man ever cut 
down a pine, and lived to see the stump rotten ' " f) has long gone 
by. Beside the white pine, the first class of forest trees is made up 
of the rock maple, the beech, and the hemlock, at the foot ; and, 
ascending a little higher, the white birch, the yellow birch, and the 
spruce. The fir, white spruce, the two aspens, the witch hazel, and 
the mountain ash make the second class. Of these the hemlock is 
perhaps second in size. It loves low, moist lands, but often ascends 

* Belknap, N. H. III. p. 80. 

t Travels, II. p. 34. Williamson says: " Has been seen six feet in diameter at the butt, 
and two hundred and forty feet in height." Hist, of Maine, II. p. 110. 
t Belknap, III. p. 81. 



234 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



the mountain side. Its trunk is as straight as that of the pine, but 
is deformed by numerous dead limbs. " It rises," says Mr. Emerson, 
" with an uniform shaft, sixty or eighty feet, with its diameter but 
slightly diminished until near the top, when it tapers very rapidly, 
and forms a head, round, and full of branches."* The rock maple is 
scarcely less than the hemlock, and was particularly abundant in the 
country about the mountains, where it is still one of the finest trees. 
The beech belongs undoubtedly to the first class of our forest trees, 
but it hardly equals the others of this rank, in the White Mountains ; 
nor does it reach above the foot, being scarcely met with on the west 
side indeed, above the Notch, though becoming very common below. 
Its erect, even, smooth-barked trunk, with " long diverging arms, 
stretching outwards at a large angle," f is almost always covered with 
a gay patchwork of lichens, and though the tree be often low and 
irregular, its firm, shining leaves, and handsome bole make it sure to 
be looked at and remembered. 

The yellow birch is another striking tree of the lower woods. The 
bark, at first yellowish, but becoming grayish with age, separates into 
large, thick, irregular scales, the raised edges of which give the 
ragged look which distinguishes the huge trunk. This rises to the 
utmost height of the forest, dividing only, like a sort of candelabrum., 
into a few bulky limbs at the top. Equal in size, but much more 
elegant is the canoe birch, " the points of light from its white trunk 
producing a brilliant effect in the midst of its soft but glittering foliage, 
hanging, as we often see it, over some mountain stream, or sweeping 
up with a graceful curve from the side of its steep bank." $ 

And last of the trees of this rank, the black spruce rises to the 
height of the lower forest, but adds to the general effect perhaps as 
much by its sombre masses of color as by its outline, the peculiar 
symmetrical elegance of which this is capable, being commonly 
not attained, to any great perfection, in the woods. This spruce 



* Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts, p. 80, a book which cannot be too highly com- 
mended to every lover of trees. f Ibid. p. 158. 
X Emerson, Trees and Shrubs, p. 210. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



235 



makes forests itself, redolent of healing perfume, and carpeted inim- 
itably with dense mats of fresh moss, in which the pretty creeping 
snowberry often hides its flowers and fruit. In such woods the tree 
has sometimes reached a great size. Josselyn tells us in his " New 
England's Rarities," 1672, of spruce-trees "three fathom," or 
eighteen feet about ; and in his " Voyages," the same writer speaks 
of one spruce log " at Pascataway, brought down to the water-side by 
our mast-men, of an incredible bigness, and so long that no skipper 
durst ever yet adventure to ship it,' 1 — a statement which might well 
have been made more particular. But the tree occurs for the most 
part only scatteringly on the central group of mountains. 

Of the forest trees of second rank, the fir is by far the finest. It 
possesses the smoothest trunk, and the most beautiful foliage of all the 
evergreens, and none equals it in the singular elegance of its form. 
No one spot in the mountains was so rich in handsome firs, a few 
years since, as the neighborhood of the Giant's Grave ; and many 
trees remain there still. The white spruce is another of the smaller 
evergreens, differing from the black spruce in its more graceful habit, 
and lighter color. The American aspen, very nearly resembling the 
aspen of Europe and of poetry, and the somewhat larger and hand- 
somer great aspen, occur frequently along roadsides in the lower 
forest, and the former ascends the mountains* several thousand feet, 
in burnt lands. Here and there in moister spots, the slender rowan 
or mountain ash displays its tufts of feathered leaves, and climbs the 
hills even to the region of perpetual shrubs. More common, and 
confined to the lower forest is the American witch hazel, a pleasing, 
" bushy tree," which does not need its autumnal wealth of blossoms 
to attract the eye of lovers of nature. The striped maple or moose- 
wood, so called because its bark is a favorite winter food of our 
noblest deer, and the mountain maple, are two still smaller trees, 
common in the lower woods. " The latter," says the instructive 
writer already cited, " assumes towards autumn various rich shades 
of red, and as sometimes seen, eighteen or twenty feet high, hanging 
over the sides of a road through woods, with its clusters of fruit 



236 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



beneath the leaves, turning yellowish when the leaf-stalks are scarlet, 
it has considerable beauty." * The red cherry, with sour fruit grow- 
ing in little bunches, is another small tree, particularly common in 
burnt lands. The alternate cornel, a conspicuous, large shrub, some- 
times almost a tree, with elegant, oval, dark-green leaves, and creamy 
heads of flowers, is frequent on roadsides Here, too, occurs, much 
more rarely, the cranberry-tree, of which the favorite Gelder-rose, 
or snowball, is only a garden variety. The hoary alder reaches 
sometimes to a height of almost thirty feet, and is one of the more 
constant and familiar of the lower draperies of the hills. The moun- 
tain alder is more elegant, in its fruit at least, but begins rather 
higher, and is never anything but a shrub. There are several tree- 
like willows in the lower region, of which perhaps the beaked willow 
is the most noticeable. 

Of lesser shrubs there is only room to speak of a few of the more 
conspicuous or important. The brambles attract everybody with 
their pleasant fruits. Of these the wild red raspberry and the high 
blackberry are sufficiently known. The latter is the more tender 
shrub, and often fails to perfect its berries; but the former climbs the 
mountains even to the upper precipice of Giant's Stairs, offering, in 
such secluded nooks, to latest autumn its welcome cheer. And the 
purple-flowering raspberry, frequent in rocky places in the lower 
region, and attracting the eye with its large leaves and rose-like 
blossoms, is perhaps the very pride of its race. A mountain goose- 
berry, with ungrateful fruit, but handsome, deeply-cut leaves, is found 
in swampy places, from the Notch to the alpine region. The garden 
red currant has occurred to me rarely in the lower valley of Mount 
Washington River ; but the mountain currant, much like the other, 
except that the fruit is hairy and has a slight unpleasant odor, which 
does not however diminish its wholesomeness, is confined, perhaps 
entirely, to the upper region. The common elder and red-berried 
elder are both frequent at the foot of the mountains ; but only the 
latter ascends them. The witherod is also confined to the lower 

* Emerson, Trees and Shrubs, p. 498. 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



237 



region ; but the hobble-bush accompanies or impedes the climber far 
up the mountain sides. Both these species of viburnum produce fruit 
that may be eaten when ripe, and that of the hobble-bush is rather 
pleasant, to wayfarers at least. There is no fruit of its kind that 
appears to surpass the Canada blueberry, when eaten in perfection on 
the summits of the lower ridges or spurs, as especially of Mount 
Crawford ; and this, which does not grow so far south as Massachu- 
setts, is also remarkably good as a dried fruit. Nor must we fail to 
glance, in passing, at the rhodora, 

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook 
To please the desert; 

still, as when Bigelow wrote, beautiful in the Notch, in June, and on 
the mountains, later ; at the cheerful but modest mountain holly, 
with its clean, smooth, light-green leaves and crimson berries ; and 
last, not least, at our American yew, than which there is no hand- 
somer undershrub, in leaf or berry. 

The foregoing may perhaps serve as some introduction to the plants 
which are most likely to attract the eye in the lower forest. But as 
we ascend, many of these disappear, and the trees of the green growth, 
or hard wood, become fewer and smaller, till they are lost at length in 
the solemn evergreen woods. This is the second zone of vegetation, 
which the people of the country call, fitly enough, the black growth. 
The trees are spruce and fir, with, here and there, a yellow or a 
canoe birch, or a mountain ash. Eraser's balsam fir has also occurred 
to me in this region, but I know not what proportion it makes of the 
growth. These woods are almost silent, and very few flowers vary 
the sameness of the thick mat of mosses which covers the earth. The 
mountain aster and the mountain golden-rod, the white orchis, the white 
hellebore, clintonia, and more rarely the three-leaved Solomon's seal, 
are among these ; but what surpasses all other herbs in abundance, 
and really characterizes the region, is the delicate wood-sorrel. 

The upper forest diminishes constantly as the elevation increases, 
till at the height of about four thousand feet it becomes a close 

33 



238 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



thicket of dwarf trees, the lengthened and depressed limbs of which s 
strong enough to support a man, make a natural, often impenetrable 
hurdle, or clievaux de /rise, to shut in the alpine solitudes. A few 
flowers still adorn the more barren soil, especially in moist places, and 
are less likely to be passed over than below. The dwarf cornel or 
bunchberry, the creeping snowberry, the bluets, Little's wild liquorice, 
the dwarf orchis, the twayblade, the purple and the painted trilliums, 
and clintonia, make most of these, which cease, nearly all, as the 
shrubs grow less. At length the shrubs come suddenly to an end, 
and the wide wilderness of the alpine region opens before us. Barren 
rocks, it seems, varied only with green patches here and there, or 
hollows, where dwarf firs and birches still struggle up. But this 
" tumultuous waste of huge hill-tops" is less barren than we think. 
The plants have, many of them, to be looked for ; but these reward, 
abundantly, the search. The largest part of the vegetation here is 
like nothing that we have seen below, nor shall we find it in the low 
country much short of the coast of Labrador. Perhaps it is the 
mountain sandwort, a delicate, little grass-like herb with starry white 
blossoms, that first catches the eye ; or the evergreen cowberry 
with its bell-shaped, pinkish flowers and blood-red fruit ; or the 
strange, thick-leaved Labrador tea ; or the heath-like cro wherry 
with black fruit ; or the mountain bilberry. These are all at home 
here, and true mountain plants ; but they are not peculiar to the 
region, and can and do grow at much lower elevations. But the 
Lapland diapensia, which is met with almost as soon, will be sought 
probably in vain, except on the highest summit of the Adirondack, 
near Lake Champlain, and doubtless Katahdin, till a much more 
northern latitude than ours is reached. The thick tufts of this plant 
are composed of many, closely packed simple stems, densely clad 
below with fleshy evergreen leaves, and making above a flat cushion, 
out of which rise, in July and after, short stalks bearing showy white 
flowers. " Of all more perfect plants," says Wahlenberg, " this is 
most patient of cold, and preserves its greenness through the direst 
(Lapland) whiter. As I journeyed through the alps in the intensest 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



239 



frost, I saw the leafy sods of diapensia as bright as in summer."* 
The dwarf birch, first described by Linnaeus in his Mora of Lapland 
and noticeable for its small, rounded leaves, is another truly alpine 
plant, which occurs in moist places, with one or two shrub-willows. 
Another, still smaller willow, loves rather the rocks, and bears the 
name of the first botanist who explored the mountains. Some other 
shrubs, of more interest, come gradually into view, in little nooks of 
the rocky region. Such are the Lapland rhododendron, a spreading, 
small shrub with leathery, evergreen leaves, dotted with rusty, resin- 
ous points, and bearing open-bell-shaped, deep purple flowers in July 
and after. In Europe, with the exception of a single Norwegian 
station, this is confined to Lapland ; but extends here through all the 
vast solitudes from Labrador to the Polar Sea. Rather more rare, 
and much smaller is the alpine azalea, with procumbent trunk and 
spreading branches, clothed with elegant, also evergreen oblong 
leaves, and small, bell-shaped, rosy blossoms. Linnaeus says no 
plant is more common in the alps of Lapland than this. It is not 
known at any other station in the United States, but occurs in New- 
foundland, and northward. The alpine bear-berry is still more rare. 
This has larger, net-veined, wrinkled leaves, which are not evergreen, 
and bears a few egg-shaped, pale, flesh-colored blossoms, which are 
followed by a black fruit, of no account, says Linnaeus, among the 
Laps. At once more curious, and more easily to be found, as we 
approach the rocky brink of the ravines, which descend from the 
high plain to the southeast of the peak of Mount Washington, and 
especially from that grassy expanse which is known as Bigelow's 
Lawn, is the moss-like cassiope, with tufted, thread-like stems, covered 
with crowded, appressed, needle-shaped leaves, and sending up on 
solitary stalks a most graceful, nodding, open-bell-shaped flower, 
contained in a purple calyx. Wonderfully does it charm the be- 
holder, exclaims Linnaeus, in the most barren regions of our (Lap- 
land) alps ! But the cassiope is surpassed in beauty by the alpine 
heath. We have no other American plant so well entitled to be 

* Wahl. Fl. Lapp. 58. 



240 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



called a heath as this. Like the last, it loves especially the rocky 
brinks of the ravines, — a low shrub, with heath-like evergreen leaves, 
the arrangement of which reminds one also of the firs, and bearing, 
in July and August, from two to five " oblong-urn-shaped," purple 
flowers, which, as is common in alpine species, are large for the plant. 

We are at the edge of the gulfs and ravines, perhaps the most 
striking inner feature of Mount Washington. The great depth and 
headlong descent of these valleys, fill, at once, the eye, nor is it 
always easy to restrict it to the humbler quests of Flora. But those 
patches of verdure that make glad the rocky walls, offer a more lux- 
uriant vegetation than has yet, anywhere, occurred to us. Here 
grows the daisy-leaved lady's smock ; the alpine violet ; the moss 
campion ; the alpine willow-herb, speedwell, and painted cup : the 
eyebright ; Peck's geum ; the dwarf bilberry, and rarely, along rivu- 
lets, the alpine saxifrage. And below, close to the fingering snows, 
are the rare mountain cudweed, and mountain sorrel. It is in these 
tiny pastures that we find the grasses of the alps, most of them of 
singular beauty. Southwest of Mount Washington, about the Lake 
of the Clouds, and on the side of the peaks of Monroe, are spots a 
good deal like those just described, and more easily reached ; and 
near by the latter is a stony plain, the peculiar home of the alpine 
cinquefoil, and a few other plants. The southwestern summits are 
lower, and less generally interesting than the regions already de- 
scribed, but the cloudberry is confined to them, and they also possess 
the alpine bear-berry, and, very abundantly, the two mountain rattle- 
snake-roots. 

Some few plants of the lower country ascend the valleys, and min- 
gle with the alpine vegetation at their heads. Such are the cow- 
parsnip, and the hellebore, the linnsea, the bluets, the chickweed- 
wintergreen, the dwarf cornel, the clintonia, the twisted bellwort, 
and the rosy bellwort. 

Nor should this sketch be dismissed without mention of a hand- 
some stranger from the Southern Alleghanies, which, within a few 
years, — so at least it seems, — has appeared and established itself in 



THE SACO VALLEY. 



241 



the slides of the Notch. The silver whitlow-wort was first observed 
by Mr. Oakes, in 1844, in the Notch, where it is now very common ; 
and the same year the writer discovered it, in soil similar to that of 
its other station, on the summit of the ridge of Mount Crawford. It 
well deserves admiration. If possible, we shall give further partic- 
ulars of the botany of the mountains, in a catalogue at the end. 

Mountain gorses, ever golden! 
Cankered not the whole year long! 
Do you teach us to he strong, 
Howsoever pricked and holden 
Like your thorny blooms, and so 
Trodden on by rain and snow 
Up the hill-side of this life, as bleak as where ye grow? 

Mountain blossoms, shining blossoms! 
Do ye teach us to be glad 
When no summer can be had, 
Blooming in our inward bosoms? 
Ye whom God preserveth still, 
Set as lights upon a hill, 
Tokens to the wintry earth that Beauty liveth still '. 

Mountain gorses, do ye teach us 
From that academic chair 
Canopied Avith azure air, 
That the wisest word Man reaches 
Is the humblest he can speak? 
Te who live on mountain peak, 
Vet live low along the ground, beside the grasses meek! 

Mountain gorses! since Linnseus 
Knelt beside you on the sod, 
For your beauty thanking God, — 
For your teaching, ye should see us 
Bowing in prostration new. 
Whence arisen, — if one or two 
Drops be on our cheeks— world! they are not tears, but dew. 



/ 



THE ANDEOSCOGGIN VALLEY. 

BETHEL, GOEHAM, BERLIN, AND THE GLEN. 



" No scenes have given me more lasting pleasure. Hie mountains, it is said, are not lofty 
enough for sublimity. But as the light and cloud play on them, and they arise around you in 
dark, or silver, or purple masses, the effect is very magical — under certain lights, even per- 
fectly sublime. Scenes more spiritual Switzerland itself could hardly produce. But all 
comparisons are futile. We grow to love a country, as we grow to love a person, because we 
have there exercised our faculty of loving. Nowhere to me has nature been more kindly beau- 
tiful. And who has not noticed how all the pleasing accessories of a fertile and homely land- 
scape gain infinitely by their union with the mountain ranges ? The streams run conscious of 
the purple hills ; every tree and flower has something more than its own beauty, when it grows 
in the shadow, or in the light, of the glorious mountains. Wherever they rear their mystic 
summits to the clouds, there is an indescribable commingling of heaven and of earth. The 
mountain is the religion of the landscape.' 1 ' 1 

Thorndale. 



/ 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 

The railroad from Portland to Montreal meets the Androscoggin 
River at Bethel in Maine, twenty miles distant from Gorham. 
Bethel itself is the North Conway of the eastern slope of the moun- 
tains, and would well reward a visit of a few days. It has no single 
patch of meadow that is so fascinating as the broad emerald floor 
under the Mote Mountain, which has excited in artists such joy and 
such despair. But its river-scenery is much richer than that of the 
Saco ; and it has so many pleasant strips of meadow, like the " Mid- 
dle Intervale," relieved by the broad winding Androscoggin in front, 
and by ample hills in the rear, brightly colored to the summit with 
fertile farms, that, for drives, it is a question if North Conway would 
not be obliged to yield the palm. 

Before many years it is to be hoped that there will be a larger 
overflow from the regular track, into the more lonely aisles and the 
side-chapels of the grand cathedral district of New Hampshire. 
Then the wonder will be that Bethel was not from the first more 
celebrated. As we write about it, we have a picture in mind which 
Paradise Hill showed to us in a showery noon, on our first visit to 
the village. The height is fitly named. We can see now the wide 
array of gentle hills swelling so variously that the verdure of the 
forests, or the mottled bounty of the harvests, drooped from them in 
almost every curve of grace. Some of these hills were partially 
lighted through thin veils of cloud ; some were draped with the ten- 
der gray of a shower, which now and then would yield to flushes of 
moist and golden sunshine ; not far off rose a taller summit in slaty 
shadow ; and between, on the line of the river, the different greens 

34 



246 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



of the intervale would gleam in the scattered streams of light that 
forced their way, here and there, through the heavy and trailing 
curtains of the dogday sky. In the morning or evening light that 
horizon must inclose countless pictures which only need selection, 
and not improvement, for the canvas. 




The ride in the cars from Bethel to Gorham is very charming. If 
the railroad approached no nearer to Gorham than this point, a stage- 
ride along the same route could hardly be rivalled in New Hamp- 
shire. What a delightful avenue to the great range it would be ! 
The brilliant meadows, proud of their arching elms ; the full broad 
Androscoggin, whose charming islands on a still day rise from it like 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



247 



emeralds from liquid silver ; the grand, Scotch-looking hills that 
guard it ; the firm hues of the White Mountain ridge that shoot, 
now and then, across the north, when the road makes a sudden turn ; 
and at last, when we leave Shelbume, the splendid symmetry that 
bursts upon us when the whole mass of Madison is seen throned over 
the valley, itself overtopped by the ragged pinnacle of Adams ; — it 
is, indeed, hard to say that any approach to the mountains could be 
finer than from Conway through Bartlett up the Saco Valley, — but 
we honestly think that, if the distance between Bethel and Gorham 
were traversed by stage, travellers would confess that it must take 
the first rank, among all the paths to Mount Washington. 

In the introductory chapter we called attention to the fact, that 
around the village of Gorham some of the most impressive landscapes 
to be found in Xew England, are combined from the Androscoggin 
River, its meadows, the lower hills that inclose it, and one or two of 
the great White Mountains proper that overlook the valley. This is 
the only region where we can see one of the four highest mountains 
of the chain standing alone ; and so there is no point from which such 
an impression of height is obtained as on the banks of the Androscog- 
gin within two or three miles of Gorham, or from some of the hills 
around the village. 

In order to call attention to one of the most striking of these land- 
scapes in which Mounts Madison and Adams are the dominant fig- 
ures, we will quote a portion of a letter by the writer of these pages 
to a friend. As it was sent fresh from an enjoyment of the scene, 
on the evening of a hot summer day, just after the long railroad ride 
from Boston, it may have less feebleness than a copy of the scene 
from memory. 

" Shall I write you a Miserere over the journey to Gorham to-day, 
or an JExultemus at the arrival ? It has been a dreadful avenue to 
the temple — the long hours of heat and dust, of roar and cinders ; 
but it is all past, and, while it made the pleasure of the clay's end 

34* 



248 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



sweeter, will not drag out any length of repetitious misery in the 
memory. We chew the cud of our purer pleasures, not of the pains 
that ushered them. They are digested in the first experience. 

" The second relief came to us in the afternoon, when our train 
struck a shower that hurried to meet us from the mountains. It was 
a grand welcome, after the morning heat. A sweeping northwest 
gust, rushing towards us down the river, flung its dim drapery across 
the whole breadth of the Androscoggin, letting it droop heavily, here 
and there, in thick thunderous folds, that thinned themselves in fire 
and rain, and left the air sweet and fresh in the track of their wrath. 
Thus the twenty miles from Bethel to Gorham gave us an hour of 
delicious poetry. Vapors flitted over the rough and sturdy hills, 
among which we twisted our way. The meadows were jewelled with 
the recent shower. The river lay glassy in the quiet light ; and the 
trees stood as pensive and cool in the moist, sweet air, as their 
motionless ambrotypes in the liquid mirror by which they grew. I 
should have been willing to stay in the cars another hour. 

" But the punctual 4 Grand Trunk ' landed us in Gorham just 
when we were due, at quarter past five, p. M. — in time to get washed 
and rested before the supper of strawberries and trout, and then to 
have a dessert ride. During supper, another and lighter shower 
trailed down the valley, and bequeathed to us a rich feast of sunset 
beauty. A sofWinted rainbow spanned all the southerly intervale be- 
tween the mountain bulwarks of the valley. Brittle mists were 
breaking over the whole breastworks of Moriah, Imp, and Carter, 
showing to fine advantage the dark masses of their healthy green. 
Clouds of exquisite pearly and fawn hues were piled over the west ; 
and beneath them, scudding shreds of fog on the Pilot Hills, would 
be smitten with the subtle silver and gold of the dying sun. It was 
a rich renewal of my acquaintance with Gorham, and a rare evening 
for a ride. I turned the horse's head northward, to let him trot 
along the Androscoggin banks, in the hope of getting a clear view of 
some of the White Mountain summits, from the point where I think 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



249 



they look grandest. Of course, I could not sleep without paying 
respects to those masters of the manor. 

" The yellow and sparkling light on the grass would have been pay- 
ment enough for the ride, after yesterday's sirocco in Boston, and 
the matted misery of the railroad journey. The music and majesty 
of the Androscoggin, briskly sweeping the curves of its downward 
grade with so strong a tide, would, at any time, reward a visit. But 
my eyes were hungry for a grander spectacle. Should I be dis- 
appointed ? I turned my head at the proper spot, with some mis- 
giving, but the shower had been propitious, — the summits I longed 
for were not shrouded. 

" Hail, glorious ridges and princely peaks ! Hail to your stubborn 
masonry of tilted strata ! Hail to your shaggy belts of pine, and the 
arctic shrubbery of your breasts ! Hail to your black ravines, your 
savage gorges, channelled with torrents and gnawed with frosts ; 
your granite throats scarred with thunder ; your foreheads bare and 
defiant to all the batteries of storm ! There you stand, the glory of 
New England, rooted, massive, majestic as in all the years since the 
first tired pioneer gazed with awe upon you, — as in all the years 
since Adam ! When I last looked at you, your twin heads rose out 
of the golden robes which Autumn weaves ; — now, the forests are 
green again, and you are swarthy with the 4 inky cloak ' which the 
spent thunderclouds are dropping over your stout frames. How 
has the winter fared with you ? Not a line of your rugged symme- 
try have the ruffian tempests of January and March softened. A 
thousand winters, doubtless, open fruitless cannonades upon your 
cones. Still you look down, patient and sublime, repeating in granite 
hieroglyphic, to the pleasure-seekers that flit in summer around your 
solemn base, the old story of Titan Prometheus, tormented, silent, 
and victorious for the good of man ! Do they not seem to say to the 
Prince of the powers of the air, as Shelley makes the Titan demi-god 
say to Jupiter, — 

Let alternate frost and fire 
Eat into me, and be thine ire 



250 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms 
Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storm*. 

See, old Adams wears one little knot of snowy ribbon on his breast, 
— a modest trophy which the sun has not yet stolen from him, — the 
only sign he gives of his triumph over another year ! That narrow, 
silky sparkle is, no doubt, a snow-drift, some rods in length, that is 
dying gradually into a trout- stream. 

" Ah, what refreshment in that sight ! the horse shall walk slowly 
in returning, that the mountain grandeur may be deliberately tasted. 
Fatigues vanish before it. The throat is stronger ; the nerves are 
strung anew ; the brain is recharged with power. Many a time, 
during the last eight months, I have found myself breathing the sub- 
limity they shed, as they have risen in the dreamy atmosphere of 
memory. But, this evening, I have looked again upon their walls 
and buttresses, and a week of rest has been concentrated in the joy 
of the hour." 

The close of this quotation leads us to say that, apart from the 
physical refreshment which change of air and rest from business 
afford, the great value of a tour among the mountains is found in the 
stock it supplies for " pleasures of memory." The labor and fatigue 
of journeyings, the excursions, the climbings, the fishing-expeditions, 
the drives, with all the pictures that are thus brought before the eye, 
are the capital, of which after-thoughts, reviving recollections, the 
occasional resurrection of some exquisite view in our reveries, are the 
interest. The rough facts of a landscape that impresses us renew 
themselves, like hill-shores in a lake, in dream pictures, when we 
have receded from them. That journey is the most profitable one 
which affords the largest number of those scenes whose lovely appa- 
ritions will rise afterwards before the musing eye. And that day, or 
that confederacy of mountain-forms, proves the richest resource or 
investment, that is found to exhale most freely the pictures which 
enlarge the mental treasury — which pays most liberally these ideal 
dividends. 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



251 



In this respect Adams and Madison, of which we have just been 
speaking, furnish the most profitable acquaintance. Their Doric 
majesty, when first seen, makes an impression so strong and so sim- 
ple, that the beholder feels he shall never lose it. One cannot see 
how the substance upheaved in them could be sculptured into forms 
that would blend more powerfully the effect of height and mass. 
They completely shut out every other mountain of the range, and 
every suggestion that there is a range behind them, — except one 
climbing spur of Mount Washington, — so that we have a greater 
height than that of Mount Washington itself seen from the Giant's 
Grave, shown, not in the centre of a long chain, but in two peaks 
enthroned over a base not more than three miles broad. The height 
of Mount Adams is about five thousand eight hundred feet; the 
height of Mount Washington nearly six thousand three hundred. 
But the valley in Gorham is only about eight hundred feet above the 
sea, while the plain near the Giant's Grave, or the plateau in the 
Glen, is elevated more than sixteen hundred feet. When seen, 
therefore, near the bend of the Androscoggin, about a mile and a 
half above the Alpine House in Gorham, Mount Adams not only 
makes a greater impression of height than Mount Washington does 
from the Glen, or from the Giant's Grave, but is actually several 
hundred feet higher above the road than the monarch of the range 
measures from either of those points. It is really the highest eleva- 
tion which we can look at in New England from any point within 
a few miles of the base. Indeed, it is the highest point of land over- 
looking a station near the base, that can be seen east of the Missis- 
sippi. For, though there are several mountains in North Carolina 
that are higher from the sea than Mount Washington, there are none 
of them that rise so high over the immediate table-land from which 
they spring, while their forms are far less picturesque. And then, as 
we have said, the forms and isolation of these easterly outworks of 
the New Hampshire ridge make their height more powerfully felt. 

It is worth while to stay two or three days in Gorham, in order 
to study these burly pyramids from various points 5 by climbing the 



252 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



hill-sides ; or to see them striped midway with cloud ; or to catch the 
sublime picture they make when a heavy shower sweeps near them 
without enveloping their summits in fog, and hides with thick rain all 
their surface, and makes them, in mid-day, monotonous blue-black 
piles, kindled now and then into momentary color by a sudden stream 
or sheet of sulphurous glare. 

But the most vivid impression which these two mountains can 
make upon visitors who have only a day to pass in Gorham, will be 
gained by a drive to Randolph Hill, which is about five miles from 
the hotel. The road rises nearly six hundred feet in this distance. 
After the first mile the summits are in view all the way. As the 
sides of the mountains are more and more clearly seen, attention is 
arrested by the correspondent lines that run northwest from Adams, 
and southeast from Madison. They are alike in almost all their de- 
tails. These earthquake rhymes are more interesting for the intel- 
lect than the granite physiognomy in Franconia. And the lower 
outworks and braces of Mount Madison repeat, in reduced form and 
reverse order, the shapes of the two great hills. There is no drive 
more valuable than this for a close study of the multitudinous details 
that make up the foreground of a vast mountain — the abutments, the 
water-lines, the ravine walls and edges, the twistings of rock beneath 
the soil, that give character to a view ten miles off, which almost 
every eye feels, but which only a critical one can explain. Here is 
a lesson in drawing which shows very quickly what a complicated 
piece of art a noble mountain is, even in form, leaving the richness 
and complexity of color out of the account. 

And then the general aspect of these mountains during this drive. 
How proud and secure ! What weight and what spirit ! They are 
not dead matter, — they live. So solid, yet soaring ! They seem to 
lift themselves to that glorious height. When we gain the summit 
of Randolph Hill, and ride to the edge where it slants down to the 
left, we stand where we can put our hand upon the mane of a moun- 
tain without reaching so far as Byron was obliged to in his poem, 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



253 



when he laid his hand upon the mane of the sea, — for he stood in 
fancy on the Alban Mount, some miles away from the ocean, when" 
he stretched out his arm to touch it thus. Here we see the north- 
eastern wall of the White Mountain chain declining sharply to the 
valley. From Randolph Hill we look down to the lowest course of 
its masonry, and up to the two noblest spires of rock which the ridge 
supports. How lonely and desolate it looks, aloft there ! And yet 




and could not bear, — is it not whole- 
some to look at them and think what they undergo for the good of 
New England ? Must we not summon Emerson's lines, that stand 
at the portal of his stirring pages on Heroism, to express the feeling 
which these granite types of Puritan pith and sturdiness awaken, 
when we look up to their storm-scarred brows ? 

Ruby wine is drunk by knaves 
Sugar spends to fatten slaves 
35 



254 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Kose and vine leaf deck buffoons; 
Thunder-clouds are Jove's festoons, 
Drooping oft, in wreaths of dread, 
Lightning-knotted round his head; 
The hero is not fed on sweets, 
Daily his own heart he eats; 
Chambers of the great are jails, 
And head-winds right for royal sails. 

It seems, however, to be true that no mountain is a hero to its 
valley, although the proverb may be false in regard to men. Many, 
no doubt, will sympathize with the antipathy of the English writer 
who says : "If they look like Paradise for three months in the 
summer, they are a veritable Inferno for the other nine ; and I 
should like to condemn my mountain-worshipping friends to pass 
a whole year under the shadow of Snowden, with that great black 
head of his shutting out the sunlight, staring down in their gar- 
den, overlooking all they do, in the most impertinent way, sneez- 
ing and spitting at them with rain, hail, snow, and bitter, freezing 
blasts, even in the hottest sunshine. A mountain ? He is a great, 
stupid giant, with a perpetual cold in his head, whose highest ambi- 
tion is to give you one also. As for his beauty, no natural object 
has so little of its own. He owes it to the earthquakes that reared 
him up, to the rains and storms which have furrowed him, to every 
gleam and cloud which passes over him. In himself, he is a mere 
helpless stone-heap." 

We once asked a good-natured old farmer who lived on Randolph 
Hill, if he did not find it inspiring to dwell on a spot where two such 
forms as Madison and Adams towered so grandly before his eyes. 
" Blast 'em," said he, " I wish they was flat ; I don't look at 'em 
for weeks at a time." " But," said we, " the great summits must 
look peculiarly grand in winter." " Guess not," he said, " it's too 
'tarnal cold. You come and see the same clouds whirling round them 
peaks three weeks at a time, and you'd wish the hills was moved off 
and dumped somewhere else." The good old fellow's flesh shuddered 
like jarred jelly, while he told us of the hardships of winter there, as 
though he began to feel already the biting nor'westers which the 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



255 



next January would unleash upon the hills. Moreover he couldn't 
understand what so many people from Gorham, especially of the 7 
" female sect," that often, he said, " covered them rocks six and 
eight at a time," came to Randolph Hill to see. 

Every symphony should have a sportive movement. But it must 
not close with a Scherzo. As we turn back from Randolph Hill, 
and descending, lose sight of the base which the summits of Adams 
and Madison crown, let us hear Wordsworth interpret what such hills 
should be in a long acquaintance : — 

I could not, ever and anon, forbear 

To glance an upward look on two huge peaks, 

That from some other vale peered into this. 

" Those lusty twins," exclaimed our host, " if here 

It were your lot to dwell, would soon become 

Your prized companions. — Many are the notes 

Which, in his tuneful course, the wind draws forth 

From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores; 

And well these lofty brethren bear their part 

In the wild concert — chiefly when the storm 

Rides high; then all the upper air they fill 

With roaring sound, that ceases not to flow, 

Like smoke, along the level of the blast, 

In mighty current; theirs, too, is the song 

Of stream and headlong flood that seldom fails ; 

And, in the grim and breathless hour of noon, 

Methinks that I have heard them echo back 

The thunder's greeting. Nor have nature's laws 

Left them ungifted with a power to yield 

Music of finer tone; a harmony, 

So do I call it, though it be the hand 

Of silence, though there be no voice;— the clouds, 

The mist, the shadows, light of golden suns, 

Motions of moonlight, all come thither — touch, 

And have an answer — thither come, and shape 

A language not unwelcome to sick hearts 

And idle spirits: — there the sun himself, 

At the calm close of summer's longest day, 

Bests his substantial orb; — between those heights 

And on the top of either pinnacle, 

More keenly than elsewhere in night's blue vault, 

Sparkle the stars, as of their station proud. 

Thoughts are not busier in the mind of man 

Than the mute agents stirring there: — alone 

Here do I sit and watch." 



256 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



We have already said that the noble scenery for which Gorham 
should be visited is not to be seen from the hotel. For this reason 
many tourists, not attracted strongly by the views from the platform 
where the cars land them, hurry away in the stage to the Glen, and 
lose the enjoyment of some of the richest landscapes which New 
England holds, that would be shown to them by short drives, or even 
by walks that may be taken without fatigue. There is no hint at the 
public-house of any such picture as we have just attempted to de- 
scribe. There is no suggestion of any ridge, or bulwark, or crag, of 
Mount Madison and Mount Adams. Yet a level walk of a mile, on 
the road along the Androscoggin, brings out both the mountains from 
base to crown. If they were visible in such majesty from the piazza 
of the hotel, we feel sure, that, spacious as it is, it would not be large 
enough to accommodate the travellers that would crowd to it. No 
portion of Mount Washington is in sight from its grounds ; yet a walk 
of half a mile below, or into a pasture near, with an easy slope, is 
repaid by one of the most impressive views of its dome and ravines 
that can be gained. 

It is by a low and uninteresting hill, which rises directly in front 
of the hotel, that the mountains of the Washington chain are thus 
concealed. Back of the house, across the Androscoggin, swells the 
broad-based Mount Hayes. Numerous picturesque spurs, broken by 
jutting ledges, whose base the river washes in its downward sweep, 
run out from it to the intervale, and fascinate the artists by the " sil- 
ver colonnades " of birch which they uprear, and by the contrasts of 
light and verdure on their higher turrets of rock. 

The sky along the northwest is cut by the grand outline of the 
Pilot Mountain wall. This ridge is remarkable for the splendid 
shadows from clouds that wander over it in the forenoons, when the 
northwest wind rolls heavy masses of the cumuli towards Mount 
Washington. It has one other distinction, too, which should be 
known by all visitors of the valley. The deep chasm which is plainly 
seen, in a clear morning, from the piazza of the Alpine House, cut 
about midway of the long battlement, and from which the cloud- 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



257 



shadows that dip into it often spread each way upon the mountain, 
like the wings of a tremendous condor, is the only hiding-place we / 
have ever found in the region, where the winter is not dislodged by 
the fogs and sun of August. The hollows under the rocks in the 
upper portions of the ravine are ice-houses that never fail. On the 
8th day of September, 1858, the most oppressive day of the season 
in the Androscoggin Valley, the writer explored this cleft, and found 
its shadowed side so cold that it was dangerous to rest there even for 
a few moments,- — so chilly was the breath from the ice-blocks be- ' 
tween the immense boulders, which the winter hides there in the 
hope, perhaps, of defying the sun yet with a glacier in New Hamp- 
shire. 

Southward from the hotel, Mount Moriah and Mount Carter, sepa- 
rated from each other by another eminence called " The Imp," 
tower pretty sharply, and form one of the walls of the Glen. The 
portions of this range that rise from the Peabody Valley, flare out 
towards their tops somewhat like a half tunnel, as from a common 
centre below. When the mists or fog-wreaths ascend from it in the 
morning, we see what an immense caldron is rimmed there by walls 
of matted wilderness ; and in the evening, when a storm breaks away, 
and mists pour up like incense from those deeps to the level of the 
thin summits of the chain, one can hardly see a more gorgeous show 
of color than is given in the green shadows, held by the deep-cut 
stairways of Mount Carter, the strong and brilliant purple that floods 
its crest, and the amber and rose with which the mists are dyed as 
they float upward to thin away and melt into the blue. 

Mount Moriah itself should be seen from the bend of the Andros- 
coggin River, a little more than a mile north of the hotel. Here its 
charming outline is seen to the best advantage. Its crest is as high 
over the valley as Lafayette rises over the Profile House ; and, with 
the exception perhaps of the Mote Mountain in North Conway, the 
long lines of its declivity towards the east, flow more softly than any 
others we can recall. They wave from the summit to the valley in 



258 THE WHITE HILLS. 

curves as fluent and graceful as the fluttering of a long pennant from 
a masthead. The whole mass of the mountain, moreover, is clothed 
with the richest foliage, unscarred by any land-slide, unbroken by 
any ravages of storm and frost, even in its ravines. 

These lines look peculiarly charming if they can be seen when a 




southerly rain is just commencing, or when a light shower falls upon 
them, but does not wrap the ridge in cloud. Does the reader 
remember Leigh Hunt's description of a sudden shower in the 
country ? 

As I stood thus, a neighboring wood of elms 
Was moved, and stirred, and whispered loftily 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



259 



Much like a pomp of warriors with plumed helms, 
When some great general, whom they long to see, 
Is heard behind them, coming in swift dignity; 
And then there fled by me a rush of air, 
That stirred up all the other foliage there, 
Filling the solitude with panting tongues; 
At which the pines woke up into their songs, 
Shaking their choral locks; and on the place 
There fell a shade, as on an awe-struck face; 
And overhead, like a portentous rim 
Pulled over the wide world, to make all dim, 
A grave, gigantic cloud came hugely uplifting him. 

It passed with its slow shadow; and I saw 

Where it went down beyond me on a plain, 

Sloping its dusky ladders of thick rain ; 

And on the mist it made, and blinding awe, 

The sun reissuing in the opposite sky, 

Struck the all- colored arch of his great eye, 

And the disbm-dened country laughed again, 

The leaves were amber; the sunshine 

Scored on the ground its conquering line; 

And the quick birds, for scorn of the great cloud, 

Like children after fear, were merry and loud. 

Frequently it has been our fortune to see a shower thus sweep down 
the Androscoggin Valley, and as it thinned out, trail the softest veils 
over the Moriah range. And how much more gentle and soothing 
its outline appeared when the warm rain-drops were woven into broad 
webs of gossamer to mark the ridges more distinctly, line behind line, 
and show their figure in more refined pencilling against the damp 
sky! 

As a general thing, Gorham is the place to see the more rugged 
sculpturing and the Titanic brawn of the hills. Turning from North 
Conway to the Androscoggin "Valley is somewhat like turning from a 
volume of Tennyson to the pages of Carlyle ; from the melodies of 
Don Giovanni to the surges of the Ninth Symphony ; from the art of 
Raffaello to that of Michel Angelo. But nothing can be more grace- 
ful and seductive than the flow of these lines of Mount Moriah seen 
through such a veil. They do not suggest any violent internal forces. 
It should seem that they rose to melody, as when Amphion played his 



260 



THE W.HITE HILLS. 



lyre, and saw the stones move by rhythmic masonry to the place 
where they were wanted. And the beauty is the more effective by 
contrast with the sternness and vigor of the lines of Adams and Mad- 
ison, that can be seen from the same point near the Androscoggin, 
where we suppose ourselves to look at Mount Moriah. They are 
Ebal, representing the terrors of the law ; this is Gerizim, the hill of 
blessing. Or shall we not rather contrast Mount Adams and Mount 




Moriah by the aid of a charming sonnet of Percival, which one might 
think had been written at evening, in full view of these rivals in the 
landscape, where the Androscoggin bends around Mount Hayes. 

Behold yon hills. The one is fresh and fair; 

The other rudely great. New-springing green 
Mantles the one; and on its top the star 

Of love, in all its tenderest light, is seen. 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 261 

Island of joys ! how sweet thy gentle rays 

Issue from heaven's blue depths in evening's prime . 
But round yon bolder height no softness plays, 

Nor flower nor bud adorns its front sublime. 
Eude, but in majesty, it mounts in air, 

And on its summit Jove in glory burns; 

'Mid all the stars that pour their radiant urns, 
None with that lordly planet may compare. 
But see, they move; and, tinged with love's own hue, 
Beauty and Power embrace in heaven's serenest blue. 

The charming picture of the marriage of these planets reminds us 
that we must not pass without notice the loveliness of the nights, 
when the full moon rises over the ridge of Mount Moriah and looks 
down into the valley, " shut out from the rude world by Alpine 
hills." 

See yonder fire! it is the moon 

Slow rising o'er the eastern hill. 

It glimmers on the forest tips, 

And through the dewy foliage drips 

In little rivulets of light, 

And makes the heart in love with night. 

We do not know any other resting-place near the Washington range, 
where one of the higher hills is so fortunately related to the land- 
scape, as Mount Moriah, for showing the peculiar effect of the moon 
upon the mountain lines, and the witcheries of its refulgence upon 
the mountain sides and ravines. Kiarsarge is the most favorable 
eminence from which to look down upon a moonlight landscape ; Gor- 
ham gives the best position for enjoying the moonlight upon the hills. 

Many persons imagine that the mountains must seem higher under 
the moon than in the daylight, when the sun shows all their fore- 
ground. But the moonlight strangely flattens them. They do not 
look half so high under a zenith moon as in the noontime of a clear 
day. A thick air, or a shower streaming before them and taking 
out much of their robustness, has the effect of lifting them much 
higher ; but when all color is drawn from them, and they stand in 
mere pencillings of black shadow and silver, their outlines are less 
firm, and they are lowered into mounds. 

36 



262 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Yet, to an artist's £ye, the effects of moonlight, when it climbs 
from behind and overflows a mountain, are unspeakably fascinating. 
There is quite a large log-house on the thin crest of Mount Moriah, 
and once in the season the full moon rises directly over that hut, — 




suggesting, before its silver edge appears, the mediaeval picture of 
the dark head of a saint or martyr, circled by a golden nimbus. 

She cometh, — lovelier than the dawn, 

In summer, when the leaves are green, 
More graceful than the alarmed fawn, 

Over his grassy supper seen; 
Bright quiet from her beauty falls. 

After it climbs above the hut, the deep blue darkness of the moun- 
tain begins to catch delicate tinges of the pale, weak light which flows 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



263 



wider and freer down the long steep slopes. The meadows beneath 
look level as a floor, and are laid with a carpet which seems to be an 
illusion of tender green grass, and light gray ground. The head of 
the Imp catches cool tinges of the pallid lustre, which slowly wanders 
down and off into the great caldron we have spoken of under the 
Carter Mount. And as it descends, the exhalations from the dusky 
depths, born from the invisible streams, that sing along the rugged 
beds of the ravines, rise and drink the moonlight to fulness, and 
hang before the mountains as though they might be woven of the 
very texture of the chaste beams that are falling over the wilderness. 

And now in the daylight let us make an excursion to 



BERLIN FALLS. 

If there were no other attraction in the Gorham Valley, part of a 
day, at least, out of the mountain journey, should be devoted to the 
village for the sake of the drive to this, the most powerful cataract 
of the mountain region. Cascades we can see in other districts of 
the hills. The Ammonoosuc Falls are very powerful after a heavy 
rain, though the turbidness of their flood gives them little beauty 
then. But here we have a strong river that shrinks but very little 
in long droughts, and that is fed by the Umbagog chain of lakes, 
pouring a clean and powerful tide through a narrow granite pass, and 
descending nearly two hundred feet in the course of a mile. 

The ride to the Berlin Falls is charming. The road is on the 
western bank of the Androscoggin all the way. The river moves 
now and then in such sweeping curves, and is overhung for most of 
the distance by a mountain with foliage so massive and varied, and 
the gradual descent of the river-bed gives the current, during a great 
portion of the way, so much briskness, while the mountain views be- 
hind are so majestic, that the six miles, if we drive in an open wagon, 



264 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



do not seem long enough, however eager we may have been to see 
the cataract. There is no hard climbing or long walking required 
after leaving the vehicle. The Falls are close by the road. It is a 




winding granite gorge through which the river rushes, over the nar- 
rowest part of which a stout bridge is thrown. Visitors should alight 
at the lowest part of the cataract, and go out through a little thicket 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



265 



of trees upon a mossy ledge, about fifteen feet above the current, 
where they can face the sweeping torrent. How madly it hurls the 
deep transparent amber down the pass and over the boulders, — flying 
and roaring like a drove of young lions, crowding each other in furi- 
ous rush after prey in sight. On the bridge, we look down and see the 
current shooting swifter than the " arrowy Rhone," and overlapped 
on either side by the hissing foam thrown back from each of the rock 
walls. Above the bridge, we can walk on the ledge of the right- 
hand bank, and sit down where we can touch the water and see the 
most powerful plunge of all, where half of the river leaps in a smooth 
cataract, and, around a large rock which, though sunken, seems to 
divide the motion of the flood, a narrow and tremendous current of 
foam shoots into the pass, and mingles its fury at once with the bur- 
den of the heavier fall. 

We do not think that in New England there is any passage of 
river passion that will compare with the Berlin Falls. But if we 
stay long on the borders of the gorge, as we ought to, we shall find 
that the form and the rage of the current are subordinate in interest 
to its beauty and to the general surrounding charm. Who can tire 
of gazing at the amber flood, from the point first described, to see 
the white frostwork start out over its whole breadth, and renew itself 
as fast as it dies ? Fix the eye upon the centre of that flood, and it 
seems to be a flying sheet of golden satin, with silver brocade leaping 
out to overshoot it, as it hurries from its loom. An artist, with whom 
more than once we have rested on the bank to catch the short-lived 
effects on the shifting currents of the river, speaks of the charm of 
" the foam foliage, white and prismatic, that crests the leaping waves, 
running from fall to fall, and circling dark domes of water that re- 
volve over submerged stones." He recalls the grace of " the foun- 
tain jets of silver spray, and of the ever-falling crystal fringes that 
hang around the black rocks." And he tells us that, at such a spot, 
" by joining somewhat of the poet's contemplation to the artist's 
study, we may see glimpses of sylphic shapes, shining in the dark- 
ness of some thin-curtained arch, or, glancing along the liquid coils 



266 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



from pool to pool, nimbly working out those rapidly changing designs, 
whose wondrous beauty and inexhaustible variety are not inherent 
in material things, but are possible only to fairy or supernatural 
powers'." 

The sides of the rocks through which the Androscoggin thus pours 
are charmingly colored with lichens and weather-stains. In the cran- 
nies and little juttings on the sides where soil has lodged, grasses, 
small bushes, and wild flowers have taken root, and unfold their ver- 
dure and beauty undisturbed by the wrath below. Out to the very 
edge of the walls, young birches and pines, too, have stationed them- 
selves to catch the fresh mists that rise. It was a cataract in Swit- 
zerland for which Wordsworth wrote the following sonnet ; but how 
could it be more appropriate if it had been written as a description 
of the torrent in whose praise we quote it ? What more can we say 
than that its fitness is equal to its beauty ? 

From the fierce aspect of this River, throwing 

His giant body o'er the steep rock's brink, 

Back in astonishment and fear we shrink: 

But, gradually a calmer look bestowing, 

Flowers we espy beside the torrent growing; 

Flowers that peep forth from many a cleft and chink, 

And, from the whirlwind of his anger, drink 

Hues ever fresh, in rocky fortress blowing: 

They suck — from breath that, threatening to destroy, 

Is more benignant than the dewy eve — 

Beauty, and life, and motions as of joy: 

Nor doubt but He to whom yon Pine-trees nod 

Their heads in sign of worship, Nature's God, 

These humbler adorations will receive. 

Those who have passed a delightful hour or two of the afternoon 
by Berlin Falls, and who read these pages, will be tempted to ask us, 
as we now turn from them, " Why do you not say something of the in- 
spiring view of Mounts Madison and Adams, whose peaks, seen from 
the bridge, soar with such proud strength in the western sky ? Why 
do you not call attention to the glorious lines that support their 
crests, — those of Madison a little more feminine than those of Adams, 
but both majestic,— a lioness and lion crouched side by side, half 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



267 



resting, half watching, with muscles ready in a moment for vigorous 
use ? Why do you not try to report the singular charm of look- 
ing down the broad stream, roughened with foamy rapids, as it hur- 
ries toAvards the base of those twin crests, and of the rich colors that 
combine in the harmony of the picture, — the snowy caps on the blue 
river, the green banks, the gray and gold of the mountain slopes and 
crowns ? " We certainly would not overlook these features of the 
landscape at Berlin Falls ; but we have a richer pleasure in store foi 
our readers by inviting them to take with us 



A DRIVE TO MILAN. 



It disturbs our geographical prejudices a little, perhaps, to be told 
that only six or seven miles divide settlements with such distinguished 
names. But it will help us to discriminate if we learn to pronounce 
these names as the Yankees do, with the accent strong on the first 
syllable. We should look in vain for any imperial palace as we drive 
through our Berlin ; and instead of a university we shall see only a 
cluster of saw-mills, where part of the forests of Umbagog are pre- 
pared for service to civilization. So too, if we should ride to the very 
borders of Milan, we might not find in the red spire of the village 
church that would greet us, the artistic satisfaction which one would 
anticipate from the first glimpse of the Duomo, which we associate 
with the capital of Lombardy. (A wicked friend of ours who took 
the drive with us, when the village first saluted our eyes remarked, 
that this Milan seemed to be set in the plain of Lumber-dy.) 

But we will not drive so far as the village. We will " follow the 
road " about two miles above Berlin Falls, cross the large, covered 
bridge of the Androscoggin, and drive about two miles above that on 
the eastern bank of the river. Then we will turn the horses' heads 
again towards Gorham. Now look down the river towards the moun- 



268 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



tains ! Do we see the two peaks that were so fascinating at the 
Falls below ? They have received an addition to their company. 
There are three now. Mount Washington has lifted his head into 
sight behind Madison, and has pushed out the long outline of the 





ridge that climbs from the Pinkham forest, and by all the stairways 
of his plateaus, to his cold and rugged crown. What a majestic 
trio ! What breadth and mass, and yet what nervous contours ! 
The mountains are arranged in half circle, so that we see each sum- 
mit perfectly defined, and have the outline of each on its character- 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



269 



istic side lying sharp against the sky, — Adams as it is braced from 
the north, Madison from the southeast, Washington from the south. 
They hide the other summits of the range completely. And from 
our position we look down the long avenue of hills that guard the 
Androscoggin, and over the wilderness from which they spring, and 
see them from a height very favorable for revealing their elevation, 
and through a sufficient depth of air to give them both distinctness 
and bloom. 

Is it not something to mourn over, that the spectacle of this 
bivouac of hills should have been so seldom seen by tourists in New 
Hampshire ? Many thousands visit the White Mountains in the 
summer weeks, and not fifty have as yet looked upon this land- 
scape, so easily attained by a drive of an hour and a half from the 
hotel in Grorham. Up to the time of our writing these pages, more 
people in England have enjoyed this view through a painting of it 
by the artist whose sketch is here presented to our readers, and who 
sent it abroad in answer to an order, than in our own country have 
seen the Creator's original. We shall be glad if anything in this 
unworthy description proves a temptation to future visitors of the 
eastern valley of the mountains to take this drive towards Milan in a 
clear afternoon, and thus add such a powerful combination of the 
mountain forms, dimpled and flushed too with countless shadows and 
tints, to the treasures of their memory. 

It is worth while to take the additional few miles of ride above 
Berlin Falls to the point where we are now resting, in order to see 
the river so calm. On a still afternoon it sleeps here as though it 
had not been troubled above, and had no more hard fortune to en- 
counter below. This level passage in its history, where it coaxes the 
grasses and trees of its shores down into its silence, as the water- 
spirit of Goethe's ballad seduced the Fisher into the stream, is kin- 
dred with the quiet of the English river, above its cataract, which 
Wordsworth thus describes : — 

The old inventive Poets, had they seen, 
Or rather felt, the enhancement that detains 
37 



270 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Thy waters, Duddon! 'mid these flowery plains; 

The still repose, the liquid lapse serene, 

Transferred to bowers imperishably green, 

Had beautified Elysium ! But the chains 

Will soon be broken; — a rough course remains, 

Eough as the past; where Thou, of placid mien, 

Innocuous as a firstling of the flock, 

And countenanced like a soft cerulean sky, 

Shalt change thy temper; and with many a shock 

Given and received in mutual jeopardy, 

Dance, like a Bacchanal, from rock to rock, 

Tossing her frantic thyrsus wide and high! 

But our readers, whom we have specially invited as guests on this 
excursion, must not be kept out after dark. We shall have the late 
hours of the afternoon for a slow drive down to Gorham, and a short 
call again upon the falls in Berlin on the way. Of course our read- 
ers all know that about six in the evening of a midsummer day is the 
time for a drive. From five to half-past seven is worth all the rest 
of the day. Nature, as Willis has charmingly said, pours the wine 
of her beauty twice a day, — in the early morning, and evening, when 
the long shadows fall. In the mountain region the saying is more 
strictly true, — not only as to shadows, but in regard to colors. Her 
richest flasks are reserved for the dessert-hour of the day's feast. 
Then they are bountifully poured. 

Then flows amain 
The surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag, 
Hollow and lake, hill-side, and pine arcade, 
Are touched with genius. 

Yes indeed, it is the wine of beauty that is poured out around the 
valley now. Who can give the key to that magic of the evening sun 
by which he sheds over the hills the most various juices of light from 
his single urn ? Those substantial twin majesties, Madison and Ad- 
ams, have a steady preference for the brown-sherry hues, — though 
round their bases they are touched with an azure that is held in dark 
sapphires, but never was caught by any wine. The Androscoggin 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



271 



hills take to the lighter and brilliant yellows, the hocks and cham- 
pagne ; the clarets, the Red Hermitage, the purple Burgundies, 
seem to be monopolized by the ridge of Mount Carter and Mount 
Moriah. 

Would that it could be our fortune to see on the Mount Moriah 
range, before we reach the hotel, a counterfeit such as we once saw 
at sunset, of the majesty and splendor of Mont Blanc at evening ! 
The clouds piled themselves over the long range as if they were 
organized into the mountain, — as if they were ridges and pinnacles 
draped with snow. Back of them lay a sky perfectly clear, but 
not blue ; it was green, — such green as you see in the loop of a 
billow about to break in foam on a shelving, rocky shore. The west 
was drenched in peach bloom ; and over the whole mass of the 
towering fleece that mimicked Mont Blanc, was spread a golden 
flush just ready to flicker into rose-color, that was as glorious as 
any baptism of splendor upon Chamouni ; and which faded away 
to leave a death pallor as mournful as the upheaved snows of 
Switzerland can show, after the soul of sunshine has mounted from 
their crests. 

And let us have the privilege of describing what we cannot hope 
to see again, a spectacle upon one portion of the Mount Moriah 
range, which has made one return ride to Gorham, from Berlin Falls, 
an enduring pleasure. Thus we wrote of it at the time : — 

" The vapors hung in heavy masses over the principal ridges, but 
the west was clear. There was evident preparation for a magnificent 
display, — a great banquet by the sun to the courtier clouds, on retir- 
ing from office that day, — a high carnival of light. As I turned the 
horse towards Gorham, taking the Moriah range full in view, a slight 
shower began to fall down the valley of Mount Carter, and a patch 
of rainbow flashed across the bosom of the mountain. From point to 
point it wandered, uncertain where to 4 locate,' but at last selected 
a central spot against the lowest summit, and concentrated its splen- 
dors. 

" The background of the mountain was blue-black. Not a tree was 



272 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



visible, not an irregularity of the surface. It was one smooth mass 
of solid darkness, soft as it was deep. And the iris was not a bow, 
but a pillar of light. It rested on the ground ; its top did not quite 
reach to the summit of the mountain. With what intense delight we 
looked at it, expecting every instant that its magic texture would dis- 
solve ! But it remained and glowed more brightly. I can give you 
no conception of the brilliancy and delicacy, the splendor and softness, 
of the vision. The rainbow on a cloud, in the most vivid display I 
ever saw of it, was pale to this blazing column of untwisted light. 
The red predominated. Its intensity increased till the mountain 
shadow behind it was black as midnight. And yet the pillar stood 
firm. 4 Is not the mountain on fire ? ' said my companion. ' Cer- 
tainly that is flame.' Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, 
the gorgeous vision staid, and we steadily rode nearer. Really we 
began to feel uneasy. We expected to see smoke. The color was 
so intense that there seemed to be real danger of the trees kindling 
under it. We could not keep in mind that it was celestial fire we 
were looking at, — fire cool as the water-drops out of which it was 
born, and on which it reclined. It lay apparently upon the trees, 
diffused itself among them, from the valley to the crown of the ridge, 
as gently as the glory in the bush upon Horeb, when ' the angel of 
the Lord appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire, out of the midst of 
a bush ; and he looked, and behold the bush burned with fire, and 
the bush was not consumed.' 

" It seemed like nothing less than a message to mortals from the in- 
ternal sphere, — the robe of an angel, awful and gentle, come to bear 
a great truth to the dwellers in the valley. And it was, no doubt. 
It meant all that the discerning eye and reverent mind felt it to mean. 
That Arabian bush would have been vital with no such presence, per- 
haps, to the gaze of a different soul. ' To him that hath shall be 
given.' A colder, a skeptical spirit would have said, possibly, 
; there is a curious play of the sunbeams in the mist about that 
shrub,' or, it may be, would have decided that he was the victim of 
an optical illusion, and so would have missed the message to put the 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



273 



shoes from his feet, because the place was holy ground. Nearly 
twenty minutes the pillar of variegated flame remained in the valley 
of Mount Carter, as if waiting for some spectator to ask its purpose, 
and listen for a voice to issue from its mystery. Then, lifting itself 
from its base, and melting gradually upwards, it shrunk into a narrow 
strip of beauty, leaped from the mountain summit to the cloud, and 
vanished. 

" It seems difficult to connect such a show, in memory, with 4 Gk>r- 
ham,' — so hard a name, a fit title for a rough, growing Yankee vil- 
lage. But such is the way the homeliest business is glorified here ; 
such is the way the ideal world plays out visibly over the practical, 
in all seasons, and every day. Only have an eye in your head com- 
petent to appreciate the changes of light, the richness of shadows, 
the sport of mists upon the hills, and you can look up every hour, 
here, from the rough fences and uncouth shops of Yankee land, to 
the magic of fairy land. While that show was in the height of its 
splendor, I asked an old farmer, who was hauling stones with his 
oxen, what he thought of it. He turned, snatched the a scene with 
his eye, and said indifferently, 4 It's nice, but we often have 'em 
here ; gee-haw, wo-hush ! ' Yes, that's just the truth. 4 We often 
have 'em,' — often have the glories of the Divine art, passages of the 
celestial magnificence, playing over our potato fields ; therefore the 
us pay no attention to them, — count them as matters of course, keep 
coolly at our digging, and wait for something more surprising to jar 
us from our skepticism, shatter the crusts of the senses, wake us to a 
feeling of mystery, and startle us, through fear, into a belief or con- 
sciousness of God. 

44 The iris-pillar suggested the burning bush on Horeb. As I close 
this letter, that passage broadens to my thought, into a symbol of a 
mightier truth. What statement is so competent as that to set forth 
the relation of the Creative Spirit to the universe ? In Moses' time, 
nature, in the regard of science, was a mere bush, a single shrub. 
Now it has grown, through the researches of the intellect, to a tree. 
The universe is a mighty tree ; and the great truth for us to connect 



274 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



with the majestic science of these days, and to keep vivid by a relig- 
ious imagination, is, that from the roots of its mystery to the silver- 
leaved boughs of the firmament, it is continually filled with God, and 
yet unconsumed." 

At the commencement of this chapter we alluded to the beauty of 
the drive from Bethel to the hotel in Gorham. One of the promi- 
nent resources of a visitor who stays a week or two at the Alpine 
House, is a ride of ten or twelve miles down the Androscoggin on its 
right-hand bank, through Shelburne to Gilead, and then up the river 
on the easterly bank, crossing it again at Lead-Mine bridge. This 
drive can be taken before sunset on a long summer day, by leaving 
the Alpine House just after dinner. And no drive of equal length 
among the mountains offers more varied interest in the beauty of the 
scenery, the historic and traditional associations involved with the 
prominent points of the landscape, and the scientific attractions con- 
nected with some portions of the road. 

In Shelburne, a small village six miles below Gorham, the driver 
will point out the remains of a boulder, which, before it was blown 
for use on the railroad track, overhung a ledge that has received the 
name of " Granny Starbird," or as it is sometimes spelled, " Granny 
Stalbird." She was the first woman who climbed through the great 
White Mountain Notch, from Bartlett, — a feat which she accomplished 
in 1776, on her way to Dartmouth (now Jefferson) to serve in the 
family of Col. Whipple. Many years afterwards, when a widow, she 
became very skilful as a doctress, and often travelled great distances 
on horseback to visit the scattered settlers in their sickness. When 
she was very old, she was sent for to visit a sick person below Shel- 
burne, but was overtaken in the night by a tremendous thunderstorm. 
The rain and wind were so furious that it was impossible for her to 
keep the road against it, and she drove her horse under the boulder 
that overhung this ledge, and stood by him, holding the bridle, all 
night. The wind howled frightfully around her, and the lightning 
showed her rivulets tearing across the road to swell the Androscog- 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



275 



gin ; but the hardy old heroine faced it without dismay, and did not 
leave the rude shelter until noon of the next day, when the storm 
abated. The builders of the Grand Trunk Eailway through Shel- 
burne ought to be indicted for blasting that rock, which belonged to 
the poetry of the mountains, when any common granite of the neigh- 
borhood could as easily have served their prosaic needs. 

The history of Shelburne, as of Bartlett and Bethlehem, startles 
us with the records of suffering which the pioneers in the mountain 
valleys were willing to undergo in establishing homes there. In 
1781, a man, with a wife and three children, moved into Shelburne 
when the snow was five feet deep on the ground, and the Andros- 
coggin was a bed of ice. The mother carried the youngest child, 
nine months old, in her arms ; a boy of four and a girl of six trudged 
by her side. Their shelter was a wretched cabin with just enough 
rough shingles laid across some poles on the top, to cover a space 
large enough for a bed. Their cow was provided with a large square 
hole in the snow covered with poles and boughs. 

The stories of the ravages of bears and wolves in the neighborhood 
of Shelburne are more striking than those recorded of any other por- 
tions of the mountains. On the drive from Gorham to Gilead, the 
wagon passes a portion of the road where a pack of wolves attacked 
an Indian, and killed and devoured him, but not till they had lost 
seven of their starving band in the encounter ; and to their other 
afflictions, the early settlers of this neighborhood were troubled, as 
those in the Bartlett Valley were not, by Indian invasions. They 
experienced not only the hardships of isolation and cold, and the 
plunder of wild beasts, and the ravage of mountain torrents, and the 
desolation of freshets, but they knew the terror of the war-whoop, 
and some of their number felt the scalping-knife and tomahawk, as 
well as the horrors of Indian captivity. The last of the outrages by 
the savage tribes in New Hampshire broke upon the settlements 
along the Androscoggin above Bethel. In August of 1781 a band 
of Indians made an attack upon Bethel, and after plundering some of 



276 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



the settlers, and taking others with them as captives, came up through 
Gilead, murdered one of the hardy settlers there, robbed the cabin 
of the family that had moved into Shelburne on the snow, and car- 
ried their prisoners by Umbagog Lake into Canada. When the poor 
captives were so worn down with the march through the wilderness, 
and the loads which the savages laid upon them, that they were 
ready to faint with fatigue and hunger, the brutes would broil old 
moccasons of mooseskin, tainted by the heat, for their food. One of 
the party who escaped describes the hideousness of a war-dance in 
which the Indians disported themselves, in one of the rocky passes 
through which they were taken. He says, " It almost made our hair 
stand upright upon our heads. It would seem that Bedlam had 
broken loose, and that hell was in an uproar." During one of the 
carousals the Indians amused themselves with throwing firebrands at 
a negro called Black Plato, whom they set up as a mark. The man 
who gives us this account returned to the old neighborhood on the 
Androscoggin, and lived many years to tell of the hardships of the 
first settlers, and to see pleasant villages and fruitful fields adorn and 
enrich a large portion of the valley, through which he and his party 
were hurried in 1781. 

And yet no Indian tragedy is so frightful as the civilized one which 
is connected with Gilead below Shelburne, and whose date is as 
recent as June, 1850. Here a Mr. Freeman lived, with a young and 
beautiful wife and three children. He was a blacksmith, and was 
employed in the service of the company that were building the rail- 
road from Portland to Montreal. A contractor on the railroad 
boarded in his family. This man succeeded in alienating the affec- 
tion of the young wife from her husband, and soon after left the vil- 
lage for New York. The young husband, who was passionately 
devoted to his wife, found very soon that she had lost all interest 
in him and in her children. At last, after insisting on a divorce, 
to which he would not listen, she told him that she should leave 
his house, and commenced preparations for a journey. A trunk 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



277 



arrived, which Mr. Freeman intercepted, in which he found beauti- 
ful dresses and jewelry for his wife, and a letter from the contractor 
making an appointment to meet her in Syracuse in New York. Mrs. 
Freeman did not learn of the arrival of the trunk or letter. But 
she still insisted on leaving her husband, and even informed him on 
what day she should depart. On the night previous the young husband 
sat up very long in conversation with his wife, and after she went to 
her chamber, he left the house. But who is that peering into the 
window when the light is out, and all is still ? About midnight, the 
piercing shriek rose from her room, " I am murdered ! " She was 
found with her arm shattered, and her head wounded by a charge of 
buckshot, that had been fired through the window from a musket 
which had evidently been aimed with care at her heart. 66 It was 
my husband," she said to those that gathered in the room. " And 
will he not come ? Oh, George, my dear husband, shall I not see 
him to be forgiven ? ,J She died before dawn, without any reproaches 
for her murderer, and with his name on her lips. Many hours after, 
the husband was found dead, about a mile from his house, and in his 
hand the fatal razor that had relieved his agony. The tragedy was 
deliberately planned ; for in his house were found letters that con- 
tained directions in regard to his children, and the disposition of his 
property. 

Let us drive now across the river, with the horses' heads tow- 
ards Gorham again, and make our first halt near the house of Mr. 
Gates in Shelburne, under the shadow of Baldcap Mountain. If we 
had time to speak of the view from the summit, which requires about 
two hours' climbing, we should need words more rich than would 
come at our bidding. But how grand and complete is the landscape 
that stretches before us as we look up the river seven or eight miles 
to the base of Madison and to the bulk of Washington, whose majes- 
tic dome rises over two curving walls of rock, that are set beneath it 
like wings ! Seen in the afternoon light, the Androscoggin and its 
meadows look more lovely than on any portion of the road between 

38 



278 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Bethel and Grorham, and more fascinating than any piece of river 
scenery it has ever been our fortune to look upon in the mountain 
region. The rock and cascade pictures in the forests of Baldcap, 




well reward the rambles of an hour or two. Boarders for the sum- 
mer, at moderate price, have been taken at Mr. Gates's, and we do 
not know of any farm-house where the view from the door offers so 
many elements of a landscape that can never tire. 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



279 



/ 

THE LEAD-MINE BRIDGE 

is reached by driving two miles in the direction of Gorham. The 
mine itself from which the bridge is named is about a mile dis- 
tant, in a ra^ne of mica-slate rocks. Although the ore is quite 
plentiful, and contains three pounds of silver to the ton, it seems that 
it cannot be profitably wrought, and it is abandoned now. But in 
the afternoon of a sunny day, when the mountain summits are not 
covered, every ravine on the distant sides of Madison and Washington 
is a quarry of beauty. The whole substance of these mountains 
seems then to be literally precious stones. They stand out in the 
same shape as when seen from the Gates cottage two miles back. 
We do not have so much of the river and meadows in view as from 
the high bank there ; but we are close to' the stream on the bridge ; 
we see it before us breaking around several charming islands, and 
then flowing with deep and melodious gurgle into one tide again, 
which hurries down towards Gilead. 

This is one of the favorite excursions from Gorham. The bridge 
is only four miles distant from the hotel, and the drive is easily made 
in three quarters of an hour. The best time to make the visit is be- 
tween five and seven of the afternoon. Then the lights are softest, 
and the shadows richest on the foliage of the islands of the river, and 
on the lower mountain sides. And then the gigantic gray pyramid 
of Madison with its pointed apex, back of which peers the ragged 
crest of Adams, shows to the best advantage. It fills up the whole 
distance of the scene. The view is one of uncommon simplicity and 
symmetry. The rolling slopes upon the base of Mount Moriah on 
one side, and the jutting spurs of Mounts Hayes and Baldcap on the 
other, compose an effective avenue through which the eye roams up- 
ward to the higher mountain that sits back as on a throne. Our 
readers will remember that a sketch of it is given in the introductory 
chapter, on the ninth page. But if the sketch were thrice as good, 

38* 



280 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



it could not give adequate suggestion of a view which at once takes 
the eje captive, and not only claims front rank among the richest 
landscapes that are combined in New Hampshire out of the White 
Mountains and the streams they feed, but impresses travellers that 
are fresh from Europe as one of the loveliest pictures which have been 
shown to them on the earth. For the artist's purpose, the middle 
distance is not sufficiently effective, and the river is nowhere quiet 
enough to balance the ripples and broken lights of the foreground ; 
but for eye-landscape, to be enjoyed without reference to the demands 
of the canvas, it would be difficult to conceive a scene where greater 
beauty of river and islands is crowned with a mountain so bold and 
yet so tenderly tinted, so symmetrical and still so masculine, so satis- 
factory in height without losing on the surface clearness and vigor of 
detail. 

Ah, what charming effects have we not seen on Mount Madison 
from this bridge, conjured by the clouds and sun ! The gold on the 
sharp apex of its pyramid in the early morning ; the ever-shifting per- 
plexity of lights and gloom investing it in a sultry noon when thun- 
der-clouds sail over it ; and at sunset once or twice in dogdays, vol- 
cano-pictures, when piles of vapor that towered over it and buried 
the summit were lurid around the lower edges, and seemed to burst 
from a fiery heart within, as the sides of the mountain were kindled 
almost to a ruby hue by the last beams of day ! It is not a single 
mountain, but a gallery of pictures, that Madison stands for in our 
memory. See it in a clear and tender afternoon, and how deli- 
cately every lower ridge in its foreground is hinted by the western 
light, that reveals no shrub, no forest, no precipice, but only symme- 
try and softness, and a proud height in perfect proportion with its 
mass and slope, piercing an azure heaven with a double peak of ten- 
der brown ! We may measure its altitude now in feet by our angles, 
and find that its summit is nearly a mile from the level where we 
stand ; we may exhaust what science can tell of its substance and 
strata ; but all the truths of its structure are nothing to the expres- 
sion it wears hi this favorable air. As it sits enthroned thus over 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



281 



the stream and farms whose green and silver wind up to its base, can 
it be the mountain which looks so desolate in the ride to the Glen/ 
that is pathless and savage to the feet of the climber, that stands out 
so ugly in the forenoon light, which, lying stern upon it, makes its 
aarsh crest look covered with soiled sole-leather ? Now, as we gaze 
upon it, we see what it was really made for. Although it wears no 
snow, it recalls Tennyson's lines : — 

How faintly flushed, how phantom fair 
Was Monte Eosa, hanging there 
A thousand shadowy pencilled valleys 
And snowy dells in the golden air. 

Its divine gala-dress is upon it. Its desolate rocks have ripened. 
Art has flowered out of the bitter geological stem. Its strata and 
truth, and all its endowments for use, are merely the rough touches of 
the brush, intended to be viewed, not near the canvas, but a few 
miles distant, that they may be smoothed and shaded into unspeak- 
able beauty. And the colors, too! What x nettings of pale gold 
upon the sloping edges of its lesser peaks of azure, when the late 
afternoon light glances down its eastern side ! Or, if a large mass 
of cloud has covered it in deep blue shade, and the sun finding a 
small opening, pours through a widening cone of rays, how will the 
lower towers and domes of the mountain temple blaze out in splen- 
did radiance, like gilded roofs with gemmy walls ! It is as if the 
sun had said, 

O thou afflicted, beaten with the storm! 

Behold I lay thy stones in cement of vermilion, 

And thy foundations with sapphires. 

And I will make thy battlements of rubies, 

And thy gates of carbuncles, 

And all thy borders full of precious stones ! 

One spectacle which it was our fortune to witness from the Bridge 
repeats itself more frequently than any other before our eyes : — a 
sudden shower driving down the valley, completely hiding the moun- 
tain with gusts of rain, — the gradual thinning of the wet veil, till the 



282 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



outline of the beautiful pyramid of Madison is seen dim and lofty on 
its pedestal, — the soft blue sky of evening revealed again through the 
cloudy west behind it, — and when the rain entirely ceased, the rising 
of most delicate mists from the surface of the mountain, to be smitten 
by the sun, which breaks through a cloud-rift, so that they hang 
over the broad pile as a veil of silver gossamer, say rather, a tex 
ture of light itself — light condensed into a gleaming web, almost too 
bright for a steady gaze ! The mountain seemed transfigured. It 
was not so much swathed with splendor, as translucent. One might 
have thought he was looking through some rent in the curtain of 
matter, upon a celestial hill, sacred as Tabor once was, with u gar- 
ments white and glistening." 

Yet we ought not to be so engrossed with the distant magnificence 
as to overlook the beauty of the ledge in front of the Lead-Mine 
Bridge, around which the river sweeps with strong and melodious 
swirl. If we will sit down upon it and study it carefully for a few min- 
utes, our eyes may be opened to the beauty of rock scenery in many 
a mountain walk or climb, especially if Ave let light fall upon it from 
this passage of Ruskin : " When a rock of any kind has lain for some 
time exposed to the weather, Nature finishes it in her own way ; first, 
she takes wonderful pains about its forms, sculpturing it into exqui- 
site variety of dint and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it into 
contours, which for fineness no human hand can follow ; then she 
colors it ; and every one of her touches of color, instead of being a 
powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living trees, glorious in 
strength and beauty, and concealing wonders of structure, which in 
all probability, are mysteries even to the eyes of angels. Man comes 
and digs up this finished and marvellous piece of work, which in his 
ignorance he calls a ' rough stone.' He proceeds to finish it in his 
fashion, that is, to split it in two, rend it into ragged blocks, and, 
finally, to chisel its surface into a large number of lumps and knobs, 
all equally shapeless, colorless, deathful, and frightful. And the 
block, thus disfigured, he calls ' finished,' and proceeds to build 
therewith, and thinks himself great, forsooth, and an intelligent ani- 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



288 



mal. Whereas, all that he has really clone is, to destroy with utter 
ravage a piece of divine art, which, under the laws appointed by thp 
Deity to regulate his work in this world, it must take good twenty 
years to produce the like of again. This he has destroyed, and has 
himself given in its place a piece of work which needs no more intel- 
ligence to do than a pholas has, or a worm, or the spirit which 
throughout the world has authority over rending, rottenness, and de- 
cay. I do not say that stone must not be cut ; it needs to be cut 
for certain uses ; only I say that cutting it is not ' finishing,' but un- 
finishing, it ; and that so far as the mere fact of chiselling goes, the 
stone is ruined by the human touch. It is with it as with the stones 
of the Jewish altar, ' If thou lift up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted 
it.' In like manner a tree is a finished thing. But a plank, though 
ever so polished, is not. We need stones and planks, as we need 
food ; but we no more bestow an additional admirableness upon stone 
in hewing it, or upon a tree in sawing it, than upon an animal in 
killing it." 

One could sit on this rock and watch the curves, and listen to the 
luscious tones of the Androscoggin, and find that the hours glide 
away like minutes. Is it a lurking feeling of the analogy between 
life and a river that makes a mountain stream so fascinating to us 
all ? The Androscoggin has its source in distant lakes of Maine. 
Our fife is at first a tiny 

silver stream, 

Breaking in laughter from the lake divine 
Whence all things flow. 

It flows narrow and babbling under the leafy shelter of home. It 
swells like the Androscoggin into rapid and noisier youth, with head- 
long dashes of adventure, and the iris-tinged hours of poetic enthu- 
siasm and hope. It settles, as its tributaries increase, into the fuller 
and calmer stream, hiding more force, and serving nobler uses ; and 
so, bearing down on its bosom and in its depths the qualities and the 
energy of its earlier hours and experience, it tends steadily towards 
the sea. 



284 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



A friend of ours once said, when he stood with us on a lovely after- 
noon upon the Lead-Mine Bridge, that the supreme luxury of a sum- 
mer life to him would be realized, if he could own a cottage, with a 
well selected library, two or three miles below this bridge on the An- 
droscoggin, and could float at evening in a boat down the stream from 
the foot of Berlin Falls, while the sun was " nattering the mountain 
tops," reaching his house in season to have an hour or two before 
bedtime with Tennyson and Shelley. Mr. Trench, the English poet 
and theologian, has enlarged the conception which our friend had 
shaped. He tells us that he believes nature has no ampler dower of 
sights and solemn shows than would be disclosed 

to them, who night and day — 
An illimitable way — 
Should sail down some mighty river, 
Sailing as to sail forever. 



Morn has been — and lo! how soon 
Has arrived the middle noon, 
And the broad sun's rays do rest 
On some naked mountain's breast, 
Where alone relieve the eye 
Massive shadows, as they lie 
In the hollows motionless; 
Still our boat doth onward press: 
Now a peaceful current wide 
Bears it on an ample tide; 
Now the hills retire, and then 
Their broad fronts advance again, 
Till the rocks have closed us round, 
And would seem our course to bound, 
But anon a path appears, 
And our vessel onward steers, 
Darting rapidly between 
Narrow walls of a ravine. 

Morn has been and noon — and now 
Evening falls about our prow: 
'Mid the clouds that kindling won 
Light and fire from him, the Sun 
For a moment's space was lying, 
Phcenix in his own flames dying! 
And a sunken splendor still 
Burns behind the western hill: 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



Lo! the starry troop again 

Gather on the ethereal plain; 

Even now and there were none, 

And a moment since but one; 

And anon we lift our head, 

And all heaven is overspread 

With a still-assembling crowd, 

With a silent multitude — 

Venus, first and brightest set 

In the night's pale coronet, 

Armed Orion's belted pride, 

And the Seven that by the side 

Of the Titan nightly weave 

Dances in the mystic eve, 

Sisters linked in love and light. 

'Twere in truth a solemn sight, 

Were we sailing now as they, 

Who upon their western way 

To the isles of spice and gold, 

Nightly watching might behold 

These our constellations dip, 

And the great sign of the Ship 

Rise upon the other hand, 

With the Cross, still seen to stand 

In the vault of heaven upright, 

At the middle hour of night — 

Or with them whose keels first prest 

The huge rivers of the West, 

Who the first with bold intent 

Down the Orellana went,* 

Or a dangerous progress won 

On the mighty Amazon, 

By whose ocean-streams they told 

Of the wai-rior-maidens bold. 

But the Fancy may not roam; 
Thou wilt keep it nearer home, 
Friend, of earthly friends the best, 
Who on this fair river's breast 
Sailest with me fleet and fast, 
As the unremitting blast 
With a steady breath and strong 
Urges our light boat along. 
We this day have found delight 
In each pleasant sound and sight 
Of this river bright and fair, 



* See Garcilasso's Conquest of Peru. 
39 



286 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



And in things which flowing are 

Like a stream; yet without blame 

These my passing song may claim, 

Or thy hearing may beguile, 

If we not forget the while, 

That we are from childhood's morn 

On a mightier river borne, 

Which is rolling evermore 

To a sea without a shore: 

Life the river, and the sea 

That we seek — eternity. 

We may sometimes sport and play, 

And in thought keep holiday, 

So we ever own a law, 

Living in habitual awe, 

And beneath the constant stress 

Of a solemn thoughtfulness — 

Weighing whither this life tends, 

For what high and holy ends 

It was lent us, whence it flows, 

And its current whither goes. 

There are two or three other excursions to be made from Gorham, 
which deserve more copious treatment than our limits will permit. 
The ascent of Mount Madison, and the drive to the village of Jeffer- 
son, and thence over Cherry Mountain to the Notch, we shall have 
occasion to describe in another connection. We must devote a page 
or two, however, to 



MOUNT SURPRISE. 

Mr. Eastman's Guide-book calls attention to this eminence, and it 
does not exaggerate the interest of the ride, or the beauty of the 
view which the summit discloses. It is a portion of the general mass 
of Mount Moriah, but has acquired a separate name from the fact 
that it has a distinct summit which, a few years ago, was generously 
cleared of trees for visitors by fire and gale. The distance to the 
top is two miles and a quarter from the hotel, requiring a horseback 
ride of an hour, or a walk of an hour and a half. The forest-path 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



287 



itself — unequalled so far as we know in the whole mountain tour — is 
lovely enough to tempt a visitor, independently of the prospect from ' 
the crown. 

Looking up the valley of the Peabody, we see the five highest 
peaks of the Washington range, but a full view is given of two only, — 
Madison, the Apollo of the highlands, and the Herculean structure 
of Washington, with his high, hard shoulders and stalwart spurs. 
There are very few hills of moderate height accessible by bridle- 
paths, from which a good view of any portion of the great range can 
be gained, — positions near enough to reveal the extent and freshness 
of the forests, and yet far enough to allow the effect of height and 
symmetry. We know of none so favorable in both these respects as 
Mount Surprise. It ought to be to Gorham what Mount Willard is 
to the Notch. Possibly, if a good wagon-road were constructed to 
the summit, it might become in time the rival excursion to that on 
the eastern side. Certainly after several visits to Mount Willard, 
when the senses have become used to the impression, at first so start- 
ling, made by looking over the cliff into the awful gulf of the Notch, 
the view gained there of the summits of the Washington chain, espe- 
cially of Mount Jefferson, is more fascinating to an artistic taste. 
And Mount Surprise gives a still more striking spectacle. Plain 
prose, however eloquent, is no fit medium to describe that proud 
smooth swell of Madison from the Peabody Valley to a peak that 
pricks the sky. It needs rhythm ; it needs the buoyant surge of a 
blank verse like that of Coleridge, to ensoul the fascination of that 
soaring beauty, which spires at last into granite grandeur. There is 
no point among the New Hampshire hills where the " hymn in the 
valley of Chamouni" breaks from the heart to the lips so readily as 
here. 

And if one wants to see forest-costume in the utmost richness of 
folds and retinue, let him look at the broad miles of wilderness that 
flow down the opposing sides of Carter and Madison. Was it for the 
sake of mountain outlines chiefly, or rather to exhibit such a luxu- 
riant drapery of blended birch, maple, and evergreen, that the tumult 

39* 



288 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



was first stirred beneath this soil ? One is tempted to believe that 
those two points — the tops of Carter and Madison — were lifted up 
gently from the level land at first, and held off from each other just 
far enough to let the forests droop in the most gracious folds from 
them, and meet with trails soft as velvet upon the valley. Can we 
wonder that the love of elegant dress is a permanent passion in half 
the human race, when the dumb hills are attired in apparel so shape- 
ly, and so richly and variously hued ? The ballrooms of Saratoga 
could not outshine the splendors of color displayed in a season upon 
Mount Carter. And is human nature to be abased by the gorgeous 
costumes that counterfeit the most precious satins, cloths, and shawls, 
which the tilted granite is allowed to wear ? 

Ah, and what intensity of expression in the ragged crest of Adams, 
which starts out, it may be, from a melting fog, and overtops the 
gentler slopes of Madison ; and what energy in those far-running 
southward braces of Washington, engraved perhaps upon a white 
cloud-background, — each worn to the rocky bone by the torrents of 
summer, and the slower but more penetrative wrath of winter cold ! 
It is indeed rich music for the eye that is afforded by the quintette 
of summits seen from Mount Surprise ; and one who can detect 
some dim analogy between tones and forms will find increased de- 
light here in seeing how, in the mountain choir, the sharp soprano of 
Madison is brought into contrast and balance with the heavy bass of 
Washington, and how the body of the harmony is filled up by the 
tenor of Adams, the baritone of Jefferson, and the alto of Clay, whose 
bulk and lines are merely suggested by their crests that jut into view. 

But a sweeter melody still is offered to the eye that turns from the 
great hills to the Androscoggin intervale. It is the strength that 
" setteth fast the mountains " which appeals to us on the west ; on 
the east we have the smile of the landscape, the fluent curves of a 
river moving " like charity among its children dear," the sweet 
phrases which man has added to the wild natural music, the colors 
vivid and tender that glow upon winding miles of shorn grass and 
ripening grain. No mountain so high as Washington can offer, in its 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



289 



comprehensive pageant, any one passage so lovely as this nearer 
view from Mount Surprise of the farms that border the Androscoggin, i 
Here the infinite goodness responds by appropriate symbols to the 
infinite majesty which is represented by the barren hills. The spirit 
of the eighteenth psalm seems to brood over the torn and desolate 
ridge where the thunder-clouds crouch ; but it is the eloquence of the 
sixty-fifth that streams from the softer section of the scene below : 
" Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it : thou greatly enrichest it 
with the river of God, which is full of water : thou preparest them 
corn, when thou hast so provided for it. Thou waterest the ridges 
thereof abundantly : thou settlest the furrows thereof : thou makest 
it soft with showers : thou blessest the springing thereof. Thou 
crownest the year with thy goodness ; and thy paths drop fatness. 
They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness ; and the little hills 
rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks ; the 
valleys also are covered over with corn ; they shout for joy ; they 
also sing." 

It is often true, however, so far as the stimulant of the poetic 
mood is concerned, that a part is greater than the whole. One sub- 
ordinate feature of a landscape may prove more fruitful of inspiration 
than the general splendor in which it is inclosed. In the forest of 
Mount Surprise we meet, here and there, a pine or spruce veiled 
with drooping moss. The last walk it was our fortune to enjoy 
through the ascending aisle of the woods, was in company with the 
writer of the following exquisite poem, to which, however, we must 
take this exception, — that if its wish were fulfilled, a fife would be 
cancelled from the conscious world, strong in its native stock as the 
oak, and graceful in its culture as the elm. The author is Rev. Dr. 
Hedge of Brookline, to whom also we are indebted for the transla- 
tions from Goethe on pp. 93 and 154. 

I would I were yon lock of moss 

Upon the tressed pine, 
Free in the buxom air to toss, 

And with the breeze to twine. 



290 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



High over earth my pendent life 

From care and sorrow free, 
Should reck no more the creature's strife 

With time and Deity. 

No thought to break my perfect peace, 

Born of the perfect whole, 
From thought and will a long release, — 

A vegetable soul. 

Thus would I live my bounded age 

Far in the forest lone, 
Erased from human nature's page, 

Once more the Godhead's own. 

And now we must ask the reader's attention to the view from the 
summit of 

MOUNT HAYES, 

which is so remarkable that it should by no means be passed by. 
This is part of the record which the writer once made of his first 
acquaintance with that view, in company with the artist whose 
sketches are engraved for this volume. 

" Mount Hayes takes its name from the excellent woman whom 
visitors in Gorham, some three years since, have occasion to remem- 
ber with gratitude as a hostess of the hotel. It is now her monu- 
ment. You remember it, doubtless, as the scarred and savage emi- 
nence that rises pretty sharply from the eastern bank of the Andros- 
coggin, and directly overlooks the Alpine House. Its height is 
probably not far from twenty-five hundred feet. Two huge ledges of 
bare and jagged rock, some two miles apart, that clamp it to the 
valley, look like the carved paws of a colossal lion in repose. Over 
it the desolate crest soars like a bald eagle's head and beak ; 
so that it sits a monstrous griffin overlooking the village, and com- 
manding the sweep of the river for twenty miles. The ancient 
mythology pictures the griffin as the guardian of hidden treasures ; 
and in this sense also the mountain admirably fulfils the symbolism 
of its form. 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



291 



" I had heard frequently from some of the old settlers here that the 
mountain was remarkable for bears, blueberries, and views, and de- ' 
sired to make the ascent of it last year ; but no good opportunity 
offered when a guide could go. The other day, an artist friend of 
mine here was told that if we could get across the Androscoggin, 
about a mile above the Alpine House, we should find a sled-path to 




the summit, and could easily reach it in an hour and a half. This 
determined my friend and myself to start about ten in the hot fore- 
noon, with the hope of bringing back a memory full of beauty to a 
rather late dinner. The paddling across the hurrying river by a 
backwoods-Charon, in a boat of quite primitive structure, — being three 
pieces of rough pine board nailed together, with liberal provision for 



292 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



leaks, — was deciededly intresting, especially for the picture it gave us 
of Mount Moriah, rising directly from the cool and curving flood, 
that seems to bend out of its track to meet the stream which pours 
down from those deep green dells. No excursion could have a more 
charming commencement. 

" On the other side of the Androscoggin, we found the hint of a 
path that led us to the first ledge ; but there all trace of it ceased. 
The heat was torrid. Should we return ? We had taken no lun- 
cheon ; we were not sure of finding water ; we had no guide ; — before 
us was a wall of forest, with here and there a patch of ledge pro- 
truding through it, from which we might make an observation. So 
in the hope of a large dividend at the summit, we determined to in- 
vest liberally in a scramble, and started on a ' bee-line ' for the crest. 
My dear editorial friend, a young forest looks poetic in the distance, 
especially if it is a birch one, and steeps itself every evening in yel- 
low sunset light. But attempt to go through one, where no path has 
been bushed out, and your admiration will be cut down, as Carlyle 
would say, ' some stages.' What with dead trunks that promise 
foothold, and in which you slump to the knees ; chevaux de frise of 
great charred logs that bristle with sharp black spikes ; openings of 
tall purple fire weed, hiding snags that pierce through your boots ; 
snaky underbrush that trips you ; intertangled young limbs that fly 
back and switch your eyes ; rocks half covered with moss that wrench 
the ankles ; slanting sticks that lie in wait for your pantaloons, and 
force you to deduct a large tare before you get your accurate net 
benefits from the expedition ; — the poetry of wild forest-clambering 
turns out pretty serious prose. It is about like fighting a phalanx of 
porcupines. For nearly three hours of a sultry midday, we were 
wrestling thus with the wilderness, without water, in order to win 
the secret of its summit. 

" But we were trebly rewarded by the vision that burst upon us, 
as we stood on the crown of the rocky precipice that plunges from 
the mountain peak. The rich upland of Randolph, over which the 
ridges of Madison and Adams heave towards the south, first holds 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



293 



the eye. Next the singular curve in the blue Androscoggin around 
the Lary farm, arching like a bow drawn taut. Directly beneath us 
lay two islands in the river, — one of a diamond shape, the other cut 
precisely like a huge kite, and fringed most charmingly with green. 
Down the valley, Shelburne, Gilead, West Bethel, and Bethel were 
laid into the landscape with rich mosaics of grove, and grass, and 
ripening grain, — needing, as my artist companion said, a brush dipped 
in molten opal to paint their wavering, tremulous beauty. Directly 
opposite, seemingly only an arrow-shot's distance, were the russet 
ravines of Moriah and the shadow-cooled stairways of Carter. 

"But such sights as these I have often had before. The great 
reward of the scramble was that it gave me my first view of Mount 
Washington. I mean to say that, from no other point where I 
have had the fortune to stand, does it rise before you from valley 
to crown in imperial estate. Perhaps you remember Punch's advice 
to the splendid Koh-i-noor jewel in the Crystal Palace, which did not 
flash as it should have done, among the other gems : 6 If you are the 
great diamond of the world, why don't you behave as such ? ' Mount 
Washington is the sovereign dome of New England, but it is very 
difficult to make him behave 6 as such.' In the Glen, Mount Adams 
looks higher and more proud. Seen from North Conway, he is not 
isolated from the rest of the range, and wears no grandeur about the 
summit. At Lancaster he looks humpbacked. In Shelburne he 
appears heavy and dowdy. From Bethlehem he shows grand height, 
but unsatisfactory form. The village of Jefferson, on the Cherry 
Mountain road, about thirteen miles from Gorham, furnishes the best 
position for studying his lines and height in connection with the rest 
of the range. But Mount Hayes is the chair set by the Creator at 
the proper distance and angle to appreciate and enjoy his kingly 
prominence. 

" All the lower summits are hidden, and you have the great ad- 
vantage of not looking along a chain, but of seeing the monarch him- 
self soar alone, back of Madison and Adams and seemingly discon- 
nacted with them, standing just enough to the south to allow an 

40 



294 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



unobstructed view of the ridges that climb from the Pinkham road 
up over Tuckerman's ravine, to a crest moulded and poised with 
indescribable stateliness and grace. It completely dimmed the glory 
of Mount Adams. The eye clung ever fascinated and still hungry 
upon those noble proportions and that haughty peace. We were just 
far enough removed to get the poetic impression of height which 
vagueness and airy tenderness of color give. The day was perfect 
for such effects. If I had been told that the dome was ten or twelve 
thousand feet high, I should not have been disappointed. Arithmetic 
was out of the account. It was satisfactory, artistic, mountain- 
eminence and majesty that we were gazing upon. Ah, what ripples 
of mystic light, waking colors uncertain, momentary, but ecstatic, 
would run in the warm noon, over that serene pinnacle ! And yet we 
knew that feet were climbing, tired and faint, up its jagged desolation, 
and savage gales, possibly, were howling over the rocks, as though 
art and joy have no right on this rough globe ! How delicately the 
shadows were tinted, to our eyes, in dimples of that crest, which 
were fissures scarred with land-slides and threatened by tottering 
crags ! Was not the pleasure the more subtle to us because we 
knew that the splendor was illusion ? And yet was not the seeming 
illusion nobler truth than the near and accurate reality ? In the 
Creator's estimate of this globe, is it not probable that Mount Wash- 
ington is a picture, rather than some thousands of cubic rods of 
rock ? " 

We have alluded frequently to the riches of color with which the 
mountains are dowered, and to the rare spectacles with which visitors 
in a valley are rewarded for their patient sojourn. Now that we must 
turn from Gorham and the landscapes which excursions from the vil- 
lage and hotel command, we can hardly do better than to carry with 
us one of the most gorgeous visions, interpreting Tennyson's phrase, 
" The low sun makes the color," which a summer residence of several 
years in the Androscoggin Valley has left in the writer's memory. 
Thus runs the cold record which we made of the brilliant fact. 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



295 



" We have had some compensation, my dear friend, for the recent 
hot weather, in two ways : for the body, in the breezes of the even- / 
ing, which have breathed down the valley, after sunset, bearing 
something of the coolness that crowns the hills on the north, fanning 
the long passage-ways of the hotel, and making a seat on the western 
piazza an incomparable luxury ; — for the eye, in the soft haze which 
has benetted all the hills. If our days lately have been as hot as 
those of Southern Italy, we have enjoyed sunset hours when the 
scenery has been un-Yankee-ized, — when the air was full of senti- 
ment, and, instead of affording free passage for the sunbeams, 
seemed to melt them, and mix itself with them, to form a new ele- 
ment, 6 half languish and half light.' It swathed the ridges with 
a vague and tender blue, that took out all their ruggedness ; it 
gave a creamy quality to the yellow that streamed over the meadow- 
grass ; it threw a halo around the Titan hills, which cheated the eye 
as to their real character, and made them look as though they had 
no duties, but had been lifted up to dream the year away in unruffled 

" The cool weather gives us brain-landscape. The hills are cut 
sharply. Every scar and rock is exposed. We are trained by it to 
clear seeing. The scenery is severe, obtrudes geology on the atten- 
tion, and suggests all kinds of scientific truth to the intellect. This 
hazy tone of the atmosphere gives heart-landscape. Wherever we 
look, it is not form, so much as hue and emotion, that nature shows. 
Rich opaline lights flush the prominent objects, changing every hour. 
Nature seems to have been created to inspire feeling. All the ologies 
are subordinate to artistic impression. The clouds mingle, with un- 
decided outlines, into the tender leaden blue of the sky. The moun- 
tain peaks seem ready to dissolve into the air. The clearings of 
light among the shadows on the hillsides make the green of the for- 
ests seem like large masses of chenille. You can't think of strata, or 
forces, or metals, in looking at the chief mountains, any more than 
you would think of the texture of the canvas, or of the chemistry of 
pigments, in looking at one of Turner's masterpieces. Rocks, forests, 



296 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



land-slides, earthquakes, are simply the material for a landscape that 
stimulates the imagination, educates the sense of beauty, and glad- 
dens the heart. 

" Is it possible, do you think, that Nature is ever conscious of 
human observation, and that she can change at all, can blush into 
rarer loveliness, when an eye that has a passion for beauty studies 
her ? I have sometimes fancied, standing on the sea-shore after a 
storm, with an enthusiastic party, that the waves caught the excite- 
ment of the company, as actors feel the applause of the audience, and 
that they redoubled their efforts in answer to our cheers. And often 
it has seemed to me that the mountains know when critical and appre- 
ciative visitors come to be refreshed and invigorated by their gran- 
deur. They will rise in apparent height, or mottle themselves with 
a richer complexity of hues, or select a rarer vestment from their 
aerial wardrobe, or look more solemn than usual or more sublime. 
If it is one of the great purposes of nature to get transmuted into 
human thought and emotion, and to reappear in human character, 
why may we not conjecture that the presence of a gifted guest has 
occult power enough, sometimes, to charm the most reverent look out 
of a hill, and induce the light to pour its most cunning splendors on 
the air, — so that the glory of the Creator may pass into the feeling 
of genius ? If the world is for the education of man, why may not 
stars glow more alluringly, now and then, to the gaze of a Newton, 
or the Alps be shown in their most gorgeous possible apparel because 
Turner is looking at them ? If the principle is true in the general, 
why not sometimes in the particular ? Does not Mr. Emerson make 
Mount Monadnoc confess that his 

gray crags 
Not on crags are hung, 
But beads are of a rosary 
On prayer and music strung? 

And does he not assure us, in the mountain's behalf, that, as soon as 
the seer or poet comes who carries the secret in his brain of which 
the granite pile is but the hieroglyph, its roots will be unfixed and its 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



297 



cone will spin ? Why then may the hills not respond in part to the 
presence of genius, though it carry not the full faith which is able to 
bid them float ? 

" It seemed to me last night, that such a law might account for the 
marvellous spectacle which the sunset prepared for us. We have 
had few magnificent sunsets this season. Just enough of the purple 
has been poured over Mount Moriah in July to tempt us, by the 
recollection of its splendor, to watch, evening after evening, for the 
prospect of an unclouded western horizon. But, during a fortnight, no 
clouds would hans; over the declining sun to catch his legacies of 

o o o 

amber and crimson ; while just enough fog would bar the line of the 
west to intercept the magnificence that was intended for Mount Mo- 
riah. We bad begun to drop the calculation of glowing evening 
skies from the category of the delights of the season. 

" Last evening, however, we had a new visitor in Gorham, who is 
worthy to see the best which the region can reveal. I drove with 
him, in a single wagon, down the southerly road, to show him one of 
our grandest mountain-views, and to let the pure breeze take the 
heats of New York out of his portly frame, — when, lo ! a gorgeous- 
ness was conjured in the west such as I never saw in this valley be- 
fore. Before touching the summits of the Pilot Hills, which bar the 
northwest, the sun, behind a cloud from which he was about to 
emerge, poured a strangeness and splendor of color down their blue- 
black mass which no brush could mock. The soft, leaden blue haze 
that lay off a little way from the mountains, was filled with a flood of 
flaming plum color and gold. It was a curtain of glory dropped be- 
fore the long range. The gold was there, and seemed, when you 
looked exclusively at it, to cover the whole line. It was there in a 
broad and apparently simple tissue. The plum hue was just as plain, 
and seemed also to be an unmixed sheet of splendor. 

" But how the two hues were so interblended in such changeable 
and blazing atmospheric silk, and how, in rifts through this magical 
drop-scene, the blue-black of the mountain was also distinctly visible, 
confounded the senses like a miracle. For some five minutes the 



298 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



vision lasted in full brilliancy. And. as it began to fade, the un- 
broken mass of Mount Madison was adorned with a lustrous purple 
sash, that fell athwart his breast from the shoulder to the waist. 
That was an investiture with knightly honor, by the sovereign sun. 
for which the mountain might well look high and proud. He seemed 
to say, — is it not worth while to stand up here and be buffeted by 
gales, and bitten by frosts, and pelted by hail, and harassed by tor- 
rents, and bleached by snows, to get, now and then, such an honor 
as this for my patience and my scars, — a baldric fresh from the loom 
of light, and woven of its most imperial hues ? So always the he- 
ro's tasks are paid by the hero's glory. Was not that spectacle a 
leaf from the gospel of nature, saying that the sunset hues, — the 
peace and triumph of a noble life, more than atone for the noonday 
trials and the chilly clouds ? 

" I had never before seen the dolphin flushes of evening thrown 
upon either the Pilot Hills or the White Mountain range, and I had 
never anywhere seen them so ravishing and mystical in their pomp 
and charm. "Was it not on account of my companion in the wagon, 
a stranger to the scenery, who arrived in the afternoon train ? Did 
not nature know that all the richness of the shows she displayed to 
his eye would be woven again into splendors of eloquence that outrun 
her reach ? Was not the sunset, was not that purple-belted pyramid, 
eager to become material for imagery through his passionate and 
poetic genius, — imagery sure to be vivid as that shining bloom, mys- 
tic as the interblending of those hues, soaring as that granite column, 
tender and pathetic, too, as that all-soothing and loving haze ? Xo 
doubt, that spectacle will be transmuted, some day, in speech, or 
hymn, or sermon, into the richer purple and gold which genius 
weaves out of memory and experience, by my gifted companion, 
whose broad fame as a Christian orator has recently been crowned by 
Harvard with honors that are modestly worn." 

The life of man has wondrous hours 
Eevealed at once to heart and eve, 
When wake all being's kindled powers, 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



299 



And joy, like dew on trees and flowers, 
With freshness fills the earth and sky. 



The distant landscape glows serene; 

The dark old tower with tremulous sheen 
Pavilion of a seraph stands. 

The mountain rude, with steeps of gold, 

And mists of ruby o'er them rolled, 
Up towards the evening star expands. 

And those who walk within the sphere, 
The plot of eai-th's transfigured green, 

Like angels walk, so high, so clear, 
With ravishment in eye and mien. 

For this one hour no breath of fear, 

Of shame or weakness wandering near, 
Can trusting hearts annoy: 

Past things are dead, or only live 

The life that hope alone can give, 
And all is faith and joy. 

'Tis not that beauty forces then 

Her blessings on reluctant men, 
But this great globe, with all its might, 
Its awful depth and heavenward height, 

Seems but my heart with wonder thrilling 
And beating in my human breast; 

My sense with inspiration filling, 
Myself— beyond my nature blest. 

Well for all such hours who know, 

All who hail, not bid them go, 
If the spirit's strong pulsation 

After keeps its nobler tone, 
And no helpless lamentation 

Dulls the heart when rapture's flown; 
If the rocky field of Duty, 

Built around with mountains hoar, 
Still is dearer than the Beauty 

Of the sky-land's colored shore. 



THE GLEN. 

The road to the Glen lies through the forest between Mount Car- 
ter and Mount Madison along the brawling Peabody River. Rev. II . 



300 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



White, in a book of remarkable incidents from the history of New Eng- 
land, tells us that a visitor from Massachusetts, by the name of Pea- 
body, passed a night, many years ago, in an Indian's cabin on the height 
of land between the Saco and Androscoggin rivers. It must have been 
very near the spot where a clearing has been made in the"Pinkham 
woods beyond the Glen House, under the walls of Tuckerman's ravine. 
The inmates of the Indian cabin, we are told, were roused in the night 
by a singular and dreadful noise, and in their terror rushed from the 
hut just in time to save their lives ; for the cabin was swept away by 
a furious torrent that had burst from the hillside where there had been 
no spring before. No date is given in connection with the story. 
One of the mountain books informs us that this was, possibly, the 
origin of the branch of the Peabody River that runs in front of the 
Glen House. But as long as Washington, Adams, Carter, and Mad- 
ison have received baptisms of rain and been sheeted with snow, the 
Peabody River has not ceased to wind through the Glen, and hurry 
with its increasing burden of water eight hundred feet down to the 
Androscoggin in Gorham. Doubtless a convulsion may have opened 
a pathway for some feeder of the Ellis River which flows into the 
Saco, or of the Peabody that pays tribute to the Androscoggin. But 
the river itself, whose curves we see and whose brawl we hear on 
the ride to the Glen House, was fed from the broad shoulders of 
Mount Washington, from the gorges of Jefferson, from the more even 
desolation of the pyramid of Madison, and from rains distilled more 
slowly through the deep forest soil of Carter, ages before any settler 
lifted an axe upon its bordering trees, or any Indian looked up from 
its banks with awe to the craggy seat of Manitou, — yes, 

Ere Adam wived, 
Ere Adam lived, 
Ere the duck dived, 
Ere the bees hived, 
Ere the lion roared, 
Ere the eagle soared. 

We are able to give a sketch of the Peabody stream from a point 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



301 



where it is watched by one of the great White Mountain summits. 
The following poem, which the accomplished author's kindness allows 
us to transfer to type from manuscript, was written after a morning 
visit from Gorham to the lower part of the Peabody, by Rev. William 
R. Alger of Boston : — 





My way in opening dawn I took, 
Between the hills, beside a brook. 
The peaks one sun was climbing o'er, — 
The dew-drops showed ten millions more. 

The mountain valley is a vase 
Which God has brimmed with rarest grace; 
41 



302 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



And, kneeling in the taintless air, 
I drink celestial blessings there. 

Behold that guiltless bird! What brings 
Him here? He comes to wash his wings. 
Let me, too, wash my wings, with prayer, 
And cleanse them from foul dust and care. 

To one long time in city pent, 
The lesson seems from heaven sent: — 
For pinions clean yon bird takes care, 
Of soul defiled do thou beware I 



It is certainly a startling view that bursts upon us when we enter 
the Glen, either from Gorham or from Jackson, by the Pmkham 
road. No other public-house in the mountains, except those in North 
Conway, is so situated that Mount Washington is in view from its 
grounds. But North Conway is twenty miles distant. The Glen 
House is at the very base of the monarch ; and Adams, Jefferson, 
Clay, and Madison bend around towards the east, with no lower hills 
to obstruct the impression of their height, — so that from the piazza 
and front chamber windows of the hotel, the forest clothing of the 
five highest mountains of New England is distinctly seen, with all the 
clefts and chasms and the channelling of the rains, up to the bare 
ridge from which the desolate cones or splintered peaks ascend. 

In the Glen we are a little too near the mountains for the best 
landscape effects ; and as the sun sets behind the great ridge, we 
cannot see the splendors and changes of the evening light poured 
over the range as from Jefferson, Bethlehem, and Lancaster. The 
best time for the effects of light on the peaks is early in the morning, 
when the rocky portions of the ridge are often burnished with sur- 
passing beauty, or from four to six in the afternoon of midsummer, 
when the lights and shadows are most powerfully contrasted. A 
misty day, too, is a great privilege, when the fogs are not heavy and 
sulky, but break around the peaks in the graceful witcheries of their 
languid and unceasing change ; or when, in preparation for a storm, 
heavy clouds roll up the ravines and pack themselves between the 
cones of the ridge, and pour over into the caldron-like gulfs to whirl 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



80b 



around their sides, and, now and then, suffer one of the mountains to 
show itself seemingly doubled in height, while all its companions are 
smothered by the towering vapors. It was during such a scene that ' 





our first acquaintance with the Glen was made, many years ago, 
about sunset on a summer evening. The clouds had hidden Wash- 
ington, Madison, Jefferson, and Clay, and had piled their inky folds 
behind Mount Adams. But not a shred of vapor spotted its fore- 



304 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



ground or flitted across its crest. The dusky outline of its pyramid, 
more than four thousand feet from the valley to the apex, rose alone, 
mimicking the Swiss Jungfrau in shape, so symmetrical and beautiful 
that the storm seemed to spare its proportions, and allow it for our 
delight to shoot its keen edges and spire into the black sky. 

Mount Adams looks the highest at all times from the Glen House ; 
and in fact, although it is nearly five hundred feet lower than Mount 
Washington, a greater elevation on one steady slope is seen in look- 
ing at it than Mount Washington reveals. The summit of Mount 
Washington lies back of the shoulder seen from the Glen, so that 
the effect of a thousand feet of height is really lost. And yet, 
after the first surprise has passed, there is no comparison between 
the two mountains for grandeur, as they tower above the hotel. Wash- 
ington is more massive. The lines that run off to the southeast from 
the summit, and especially those that sweep around the Great Gulf 
and Tuckerman's Ravine, are far more grand and fascinating, to the 
eye of an artist, than the symmetry of the slim pyramid of Ad- 
ams. One can never tire of looking at their sharp, curving edges, 
into whose steely hardness the torrents and rock-slides have torn 
steep dykes, that in the afternoon are delicate engravings of graceful 
shadow. And seen through a southerly air or a light shower, that 
shows, much more plainly than clear air does, the number and the 
graceful flow as well as vigor of these lines, we learn that the great 
privilege of the Glen is the opportunity it gives for studying from 
below the granite braces of the cone of Mount Washington. 

It is very difficult, even after twenty opportunities of study, to 
copy from memory the outline of a well-formed mountain. And if 
not outlines, a fortiori not details of mass, which have all the com- 
plexity of the outline multiplied a thousand-fold, and drawn in fainter 
colors. " Nothing is more curious," says Mr. Ruskin, " than the 
state of embarrassment into which the unfortunate artist must soon 
be cast, when he endeavors honestly to draw the face of the simplest 
mountain cliff— say a thousand feet high, and two or three miles dis- 
tant. It is full of exquisite details, all seemingly decisive and clear ; 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



305 



but when he tries to arrest one of them, he cannot see it, — cannot 
find where it begins or ends, — and presently it runs into another ; 
and then he tries to draw that, but that will not be drawn, neither, / 
until it has conducted him to a third, which, somehow or another, 
made part of the first ; presently he finds that, instead of three, there 
. are in reality four, and then he loses his place altogether. He tries 
to draw clear lines, to make his work look craggy, but finds then that it 
is too hard ; he tries to draw soft lines, and it is immediately too soft ; 
he draws a curved line, and instantly sees it should have been 
straight ; a straight one, and finds when he looks up again that it 
has got curved while he was drawing it. There is nothing for him 
but despair, or some sort of abstraction and shorthand for cliff. Then 
the only question is, which is the wisest abstraction ; and out of the 
multitude of fines that cannot altogether be interpreted, which are 
the really dominant ones ; so that if we cannot give the whole, we 
may at least give what will convey the most important facts about 
the cliff." 

We have alluded in a former chapter to the grand contrast, in 
spring, of the snowfields on Mount Washington with the infant green 
of the forests below. But October is the best season for a visit to 
the Glen. In the middle of that month, the summits are often en- 
tirely covered with their winter whiteness. We have in our mind's 
eye now the spectacle which a ride from Gorham to the Glen, about 
the middle of October, has added to the gallery of our memory. For 
a large part of the way, Mount Washington was in sight more plainly 
than in summer, on account of the dropping of the leaves from many 
of the trees that border the road. It looked higher than in July or 
August. Around the base, orange, pale yellow, and brown were 
intermixed with evergreens ; above these hues was a zone of dark 
purple ; and over this, where in summer rises the gray or gray-green 
barrenness, a great dome of white, as though its sheathing might 
have been mother-of-pearl, swelled towards the heavy and rolling 
clouds. But as we emerged from the woods, and, from the hill where 



306 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



the Glen House is first seen, turned to get a sight of Mount Adams, 
the view was really startling. The sun was shining upon it, and it 
flashed above the gorgeous hues of its lower forest like a silver spire. 
The air was cool and transparent, the clouds were flying, there was 
no rain, and yet the effect was as though something was falling from 
the clouds over the mountain, — as though an emerald dust was sift- 
ing upon the sparkling crest and slope. After a while, the clouds 
settled a little lower and touched the mountain-tops, and for an hour 
or two would let their vapors droop a little below the crests, then 
draw them back till they just touched their tips, and thus allowed 
them to sway and waver for several hours. The flushes of the sun- 
set on the Wetterhorn or Monte Rosa, the gorgeousness of tropic 
vegetation around the base and on the first acclivities of Chimborazo, 
are worth as pictures all the labor and expense which it costs to see 
them. Yet it is not impossible that one might find, in such a view 
of the Glen as October sometimes provides, a richer combination of 
colors than can be displayed by any landscape, unspeakably grander 
in proportion, in the great mountain districts of the globe. 

And now shall we climb a few hundred feet of Mount Carter be- 
hind the Glen House, in order to obtain a more impressive view of 
the great hills we have been speaking of, and to enjoy the pleasures 
that reward such exertion. While we are shut in by the forest, we 
may turn our attention to the symmetry and varieties of the leaves, 
and try to learn something of Nature's wealth of resources as to 
graceful form, within narrow boundaries. An eye that is sensitive to 
the grace of curves and parabolas and oval swells will marvel at the 
feast which a day's walk in the woods will supply from the trees, the 
grasses, and the weeds, in the varying outlines, the notchings, vein- 
ings, and edgings of the leaves. They stand for the art of sculpture 
in Botany, representing the intellectual delight of Nature in form, 
as the flowers express the companion art of painting. Leaves are 
the Greek, flowers the Italian phase of the spirit of beauty that 
reveals itself through the Flora of the globe. 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



307 



An exhaustive collection of leaves would form one of the most 
attractive museums that could be gathered. It would be a privilege 
that could not but unseal in some measure the dullest eye, to look in / 
one day over the whole scale of Nature's foliage-art, from the feath- 
ery spray of the moss, to the tough texture on the Amazon lily's 
stem that will float a burden of a hundred weight ; from the bristles 
of the pine-tree to the Ceylon palm leaf that will shield a family with 
its shade. Would it not astonish us into something like reverent 
admiration, if we could sweep the gradations of Nature's green as it 
is distilled from arctic and temperate and tropic light, and varied by 
some shade on every leaf that grows ; if we could scan all the tex- 
tures of the drapery woven out of salts and water in botanic looms, 
from the softest silk of the corn to the broad tissue of the banana's 
stock ; if we could see displayed in wide masses all the hues in which 
Autumn dyes the leaves of our own forests, as though every square 
mile had been drenched in the aerial juices of a gorgeous sunset ? 
And then when we should see how the general geometry of the ver- 
dure is broken into countless patterns, we should find our museum 
of leaves as engaging a school for the education of the intellect as 
a collection of all vertebrae, or a representative conservatory of the 
globe. 

A careful and eloquent observer of Nature describes the leaf as a 
sudden expansion of the stem that bore it ; an uncontrollable expres- 
sion of delight, on the part of the twig, that Spring has come, shown 
in a fountain-like expatiation of its tender green heart into the air. 
And to hold this joy, Nature moulds the leaves as vases into the most 
diverse and fantastic shapes, — of eggs, and hearts, and circles, of 
lances and wedges, and arrows and shields. She cleaves, and parts, 
and notches them in the most cunning ways, combines their blades 
into subtle and complicated varieties, and scallops their edges and 
points into patterns that involve seemingly every possible angle and 
every line of grace. 

Mr. Agassrz, from a single scale, is able to draw the form of the 
fish to which it belongs. It is possible that we may yet find in the 



308 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



leaf the whole character of the tree. A recent writer on botany 
maintains that a leaf with a leaf-stalk implies that the tree to which 
it belongs has naturally a bare trunk for a certain distance ; but that 
a leaf without a leaf-stalk shows that its parent tree is naturally 
branched from the ground. Also that there is a correspondence be- 
tween the disposition and distribution of the leaf-veins and the dispo- 
sition and distribution of the branches of the trees. Still further, 
that the angle at which the lateral veins in the leaf go off shows the 
angle at which the branch goes off, and that the curve of the vein 
shows the curve of the corresponding branch. Mr. Ruskin tells us 
that " the numbers of any great composition, arranged about a cen- 
tre, are always reducible to the law of the ivy leaf, the best cathe- 
dral entrances having five porches corresponding in proportional 
purpose to its five lobes ; while the loveliest groups of lines attain- 
able in any pictorial composition are always based on the section of 
the leaf-bud, or on the relation of its ribs to the convex curve inclos- 
ing them." And in a grander architecture than any human one, the 
laws of the arrangement of leaves around their stem are repeated. 
For it is found that the relations between the times of the revolutions 
of the planets in the solar system around the sun, are expressed by 
the same series of fractions which show the combinations most fre- 
quently observed in the arrangement of leaves, in spirals around their 
stems. 4 The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf.' 

And those five huge mountains, that face us as we rise out of the 
woods of Mount Carter into a little clearing — Washington, Clay, Jeffer- 
son, Adams, Madison, which seem to tower far more grandly when seen 
from this height than from the plateau in the Glen — are not the lines 
of the leaf shown to us in the veins of their ravines, and in the curves 
that bound many of their spires of rock, or that show T the grace into 
which their landslides have subsided ? Only we must remember that 
these five huge lobes of earth, seen at the proper distance, are petals 
rather, of a mighty flower, whose bloom is not fixed for certain sea- 
sons, but flushes and fades by incalculable laws. And it is not fixed 
hues, such as a rose or a dahlia or a tulip bears, that this corolla of 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



309 




/ 





earth is appointed to 
display ; but every 
tender dye, which 
the sun's pencil 
leaves upon the Flo- 
ra of New England, 
glows upon them at 
morning or at sun- 
set, and their bloom 
is the richest when 
the vital forces of 
the garden and the 
forest are checked by 
the winter frosts and 
buried in the snow. 



We shall have a very grand view of Mount Washington on the 
way from the Glen House to visit the two cascades, a few miles dis- 



310 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



tant in Pinkham Pass. In the Autumn of 1858, a clearing was 
made about three miles from the Glen, which opens the nearest view 
of the whole summit and shoulders of Mount Washington, which can 
ever probably be obtained from the base. It is near a small fountain 
whose water flows two ways — from one side into a branch of the 
Saco, from the other into a branch of the Androscoggin, — that we 
gain the view of the deep hollows and rocky ruins over which the 
dome of the great mountain is so serenely set. On one of those hard 
ridges, four thousand feet above us, three drops of rain may fall hi 
company, one of which may trickle off towards the Ammonoosuc, to 
be borne into the Connecticut ; while the other two, sinking into the 
invisible veins that feed this fountain, and bubbling up into it, may 
part company again, — on one side for the Peabody River, on the 
other for the Ellis, — and thus be received into the sea at different 
openings on the coast of Maine. Is not this a hieroglyphic lesson in 
the great spiritual laws ? 

So from the heights of Will 
Life's parting stream descends, 
And as a moment turns its slender rill, 
Each widening torrent bends, — 

From the same cradle's side, 
From the same mother's knee, — 
One to long darkness and the frozen tide, 
One to the peaceful sea! 

The waterfalls we are to seek are not at a great distance from the 
road, as many of the others are, which we have described ; and on 
our way to the 

CRYSTAL CASCADE, 

let us bear in mind that " of all inorganic substances, acting in their 
own proper nature, and without assistance or combination, water is 
the most wonderful. If we think of it as the source of all the change- 
fulness and beauty which we have seen in clouds ; then as the instru- 
ment by which the earth we have contemplated was modelled into 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



311 



symmetry, and its crags chiselled into grace ; then as, in the form 
of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that transcendent 
light which we could not have conceived if we had not seen ; then as 
it exists in the form of the torrent, — in the iris which spans it, in the 
morning mist which rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which 
mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river ; finally, 
in that which is to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, 
unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity of 
the sea ; what shall we compare to this mighty, this universal ele- 
ment, for glory and for beauty ? or how shall we follow its eternal 
changefulness of feeling ? It is like trying to paint a soul." 

We never look at the Crystal Cascade without revering and re- 
joicing over the poetry with which Nature invests the birth of so 
common a thing as water. The making of the most costly wine, 
after the sun has ceased to tinge the grape with purple, and to 
infuse sweetness into its pulp, has no such poetic charm connected 
with it as encircles the advent of pure water. The gentle and invisi- 
ble suction of it in vapor fresh from the salt fountains of the sea ; its 
dropping in crystal snow piled in fantastic drifts and pinnacles upon 
the lofty mountain ridges, to melt there under the climbing summer 
sun ; its descent in showers, or in tempests driven by howling winds 
and flashing electric fire ; and then the passages of its earthly his- 
tory, — its trickling from the hard rocks of lofty summits, flavored with 
the cold pure breath of mountain winds, its leaping in rills, and their 
marriage into brooks, its plunging in cascades, that laugh joyously 
through sloping forests, its calmer flow through green nooks and over 
mossy rocks, its soft " complaining " creep, " making the meadows 
green," while it bears its burden to a river's treasury, or its untiring 
bubble from the ground in springs, — what process of nature has so 
much to stimulate and engage the imagination as the biography of 
water, from its birth out of the ocean to its presence on our summer 
tables to assuage our thirst ! If wine were our ordinary drink, and 
water were as rare and expensive as our richest wine, and there were 



312 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



only one elevation on the globe, — some ice-coned Chimborazo, some 
jagged Jungfrau, — where it was collected, condensed, and distrib 
uted in streams, what gorgeous poetrj would be dedicated to the 
rare and gracious fluid, what eagerness to get draughts of it, what 
sums would be paid for transparent ice-blocks of it, what enthusiastic 
pilgrimages be made to the majestic crystal distillery piercing the 
heavens, whence the cloud-vapor was given in trickling beauty and 
melody to man ! Yet every mountain is such a distillery, and the 
rocky bed of every leaping rivulet the vein of such a mysterious and 
poetic mercy to the world. We lack the insight to connect the 
processes and weave the history of the gift into marvel and beauty. 

It requires about half an hour to reach the Crystal Cascade, with 
a party of ladies, from the side of the road where the wagon is left. 
And visitors should not forget that the proper point from which to 
see it is not the foot of the fall itself, but the top of the little cliff 
directly opposite. No contrast more striking can be found among 
the mountains than that of age and youth, which is furnished from 
that point. The cliff is richly carpeted with mosses that have been 
nourished and thickened by centuries, and that never till within ten 
years have yielded to any pressure more rude than the step of a 
partridge, or the footfall of a fawn. The rocks of the neighboring 
precipices look old. They are cracked and seamed as though the 
forces of decay had wound their coils fairly around them, and were 
crumbling them at leisure. The lichens upon them look bleached 
and feeble. These protruding portions of its anatomy indicate that 
Mount Washington has passed the meridian of his years. But the 
waterfall gives the impression of graceful and perpetual youth. Down 
it comes, leaping, sliding, tripping, widening its pure tide, and then 
gathering its thin sheet to gush through a narrowing pass in the 
rocks, — all the way thus, from under the sheer walls of Tuckerman's 
Ravine, some miles above, till it reaches the curve opposite the point 
where we stand, and winding around it, sweeps down the bending 
stairway, shattering its substance into exquisite crystal, but sending 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



313 



off enough water to the right side of its path to slip and trickle over 
the lovely, dark green mosses that cling to the gray and purple rocks. 
For how many thousand years has it enlivened the mountain side 
thus with its flashes and its dance ? Perhaps long enough to have 




fulfilled one of the great Platonic years, — long enough for the very 
water which in one summer week has poured down its channels, to be 
returned from the sea by the clouds, to the very same spot over the 
mountain ridge, and to repeat their journey. 



314 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



But there is no suggestion of age in its curves and color, or in the 
sprightliness of its voice. Beautiful plunderer, it has made the 
mountain more meagre, and has torn out thousands of tons from his 
bulk, to find a more easy pathway down which it might move. But 
it is not only undimmed youth, it is feminine grace and freshness and 
charm which it expresses, — 

Laugh of the mountain! lyre of bird and tree' 
Pomp of the meadow I mirror of the morn! 
The soul of April, unto whom are born 
The rose and jassamine, leaps wild in thee! 

The mountain has yielded without murmur to the humors of the 
stream in choosing and channelling its path. The scene is the story 
told in a mightier sculpture than art can manage, of Ariadne riding 
the panther, — beauty resting gracefully on the submissive brute. 
And yet, when we forecast the service of these beautiful crystal 
sheets, born in part of snows packed in the shadowed caverns above, 
in carrying coolness to the Saco and North Conway, let it remind us 
of Longfellow's verses : — 

God sent his messenger the rain, 
And said unto the mountain brook, 
" Rise up and from thy caverns look 
And leap, with naked, snow-white feet, 
From the cool hills into the heat 
Of the broad, arid plain." 

God sent his messenger of faith, 
And whispered in the maiden's heart, 
" Rise up and look from where thou art 
And scatter with unselfish hands 
Thy freshness on the barren sands 
And solitudes of Death." 

The surroundings of 

THE GLEN ELLIS FALL 

are more grand than those of the cascade just spoken of. In fact, if 
we wished to take a person into a scene that would seem to be the 



THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 



315 



very heart of mountain wildness, without wishing to make him climb 
into any of the ravines, we should invite him to visit this fall of the 
Ellis River. The best view of the fall is obtained by leaning against 
a tree that overhangs a sheer precipice, and looking down upon the 
slide and foam of the narrow and concentrated cataract to where it 




splashes into the dark green pool, a hundred feet below. And then 
as we look off from this point above the fall, we see the steep side of 
Mount Carter crowded to the ridge with the forest. It is not the 
sense of age, but of grim, almost fierce wildness, that is breathed 
from the scenery, amid which this cataract takes a leap of eighty 



316 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



feet to carry its contribution to the Saco. But we must be careful 
how we talk of the leap of the river, or we shall have Mr. Ruskin 
after us. He tells us that artists seldom convey the characteristic 
of a powerful stream that descends a long distance through a narrow 
channel, where it has a chance to expand as it falls. The springing 
lines of parabolic descent are apt to be the controlling feature of the 
picture. The stream is made to look active all the way, not supine. 
" Now water will leap a little way, it will leap down a weir or over a 
stone, but it tumbles over a high fall like this ; and it is when we 
have lost the parabolic line, and arrived at the catenary, — when we 
have lost the spring of the fall, and arrived at the plunge of it, that 
we begin really to feel its weight and wildness. Where water takes 
its first leap from the top, it is cool, and collected, and uninteresting, 
and mathematical, but it is when it finds that it has got into a scrape, 
and has farther to go than it thought for, that its character comes 
out ; it is then that it begins to writhe, and twist, and sweep out zone 
after zone in wilder stretching as it falls, and to send down the 
rocket-like, lance-pointed, whizzing shafts at its sides, sounding for 
the bottom." 

It is feminine and maidenly grace that is illustrated by the crystal 
cascade ; it is masculine youth, the spirit of heroic adventure, that 
is suggested by this stream, which flows for a long way level over a 
rocky bed before it breaks from its mountain-prison into a broader 
life. 

Take, cradled Nursling of the mountain, take 

This parting glance, no negligent adieu! 

A Protean change seems wrought while I pursue 

The curves, a loosely scattered chain doth make; 

Or rather thou appear'st a glittering snake, 

Silent, and to the gazer's eye untrue, 

Thridding with sinuous lapse the rushes, through 

Dwarf willows gliding, and by ferny brake. 

Starts from a dizzy steep the undaunted Rill 

Robed instantly in garb of snow-white foam; 

And laughing dares the Adventurer, who hath clomb 

So high, a rival purpose to fulfil; 

Else let the dastard backward wend, and roam, 

Seeking less bold achievement, where he will! 



/ 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



^3 



Every morn I lift my head, 
Gaze o'er New England underspread, 
South f rom Saint Lawrence to the Sound, 
From Catskill east to the sea-bound. 

Oft as morning ivreatlies my scarf 
Fled the last plumide of the Dark, 
Pants up hither the spruce clerk 
From South Cove and City Wharf 
I take him up my rugged sides, 
Half repentant, scant of breath, — 
Bead-eyes my granite chaos show, 
And my midsummer snow; 
Open the daunting map beneath, — 
All his country, sea and land, 
Dwarfed to measure of his hand, 
His day's ride is a furlong space, 
His city-tops a glimmering haze. 
I plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding : 
" See there the grim gray rounding 
Of the bullet of the earth 
Whereon ye sail, 
Tumbling steep 
In the uncontinented deep.'" 
Be looks on that, and he turns pale. 
' Tis even so ; this treacherous kite, 
Farm-furrowed, town-incrusied sphere, 
Thoughtless of its anxious freight, 
Plunges eyeless on forever ; 
And he, poor parasite. 
Cooped in a ship he cannot steer, — 
Who is the captain he knows not, 
Port or pilot trows not, — 
Risk or ruin he must, share. 
I scowl on him with my cloud, 
With my north-wind dull his blood; 
I lame him, clattering down the rocks , 
And to live he is in fear. 
Then, at last, 1 let him down 
Once more into his dapper town. 
To chatter, frightened, to his clan, 
And forget me if he can. 

Emerson. 



ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 

We have thus far been describing the appearance of Mount Wash- 
ington and of the range as they are seen in the landscape, or directly 
from the base. Now let us hear the call : 

Up! where the airy citadel 

O'erlooks the surging landscape's swell. 

The Indians heard no such invitation to mount the rocky cone where 
66 dappling shadows climb." They did not dare to ascend above the 
line of vegetation. On the ridge and the peaks, they said, the Great 
Spirit dwells. The darkness of the fire tempest pursues the steps 
that rise above the green leaves. No footmarks are seen returning 
from the home of Manitou in the clouds. They had a tradition that 
Passaconaway, the sachem of Pennacook, was once lifted in a car of 
flaming fire from the summit of the ridge to a council in heaven. 
He was their Elijah, as the chief who, according to their tradition, 
was saved on Mount Washington from a general flood, was the In- 
dian Noah. But their general belief was, that those who were guilty 
of the sacrilege of ascending to where the moss alone can grow, 
were forbidden to enter the Happy Land beyond the sunset, but 
must wander forever as ghosts among the wild gorges and gloomy 
caverns of the mountains they had dared to profane. Which is 
nobler, such superstitious veneration for 

these dedicated blocks, 
Which who can tell what mason laid? 

or the levity, and the poverty of insight and joy, which thousands of 
us carry not only to the mountain valleys, but also to the sacred 

43* 



320 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



observatories from which the Creator reveals the sublimity of the 
heavens and the pomp of the land ? " Whereas the mediaeval never 
painted a cloud, but with the purpose of placing an angel in it ; and 
a Greek never entered a wood without expecting to meet a god in it ; 
we should think the appearance of an angel in a cloud wholly unnatu- 
ral, and should be seriously surprised by meeting a god anywhere. 

I do not know if there be game on Sinai, but I am always 

expecting to hear of some one shooting over it." It is grand to be 
delivered from superstition, but not on the condition of losing the 
sentiment of the sacred, the mystic, the awful in the universe, of 
which superstition is either the immaturity or the disease. We do 
not necessarily gain in insight by banishing the special sacredness 
which a crude imagination concentrates upon parts of nature, but by 
discerning a nobler general sanctity. A purblind vision is cured, not 
when it sinks into utter darkness, but when it receives more light. 

There are three paths for the ascent of Mount Washington, — one 
from the Crawford House at the Notch, one from the White Moun- 
tain House, five miles beyond the Notch, and one from the Glen. 
The path from the White Mountain House requires the shortest 
horseback ride. Parties are carried by wagons up the side of Mount 
Washington to a point less than three miles from the summit. The 
bridle-path, however, is quite steep, and no time is gained by this 
ascent. The rival routes are those from the Notch and the Glen. 
Each of these has some decided advantages over the other. The 
Glen route is the shortest. For the first four miles the horses keep 
the wide and hard track, with a regular ascent of one foot in eight, 
which was laid out for a carriage road to the summit, but never 
completed. This is a great gain over the corduroy and mud through 
the forests of Mount Clinton, which belong to the ascent from the 
Notch. 

When we rise up into the region where the real mountain scenery 
opens, the views from the two paths are entirely different in charac- 
ter, and it is difficult to decide which is grander. From the Notch, 
as soon as we ride out of the forest, we are on a mountain top. We 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



321 



have scaled Mount Clinton, which is 4,200 feet high. Then the 
path follows the line of the White Mountain ridge. We descend a 
little, and soon mount the beautiful dome of Mount Pleasant, which / 
is five hundred feet higher. Descending this to the narrow line of 
the ridge again, we come to Mount Franklin, a little more than a 
hundred feet higher than Pleasant, less marked in the landscape, but 
very difficult to climb. Beyond this, five hundred feet higher still, 
are the double peaks of Mount Monroe ; and then winding down to 
the Lake of the Clouds, from whence the Ammonoosuc issues, we 
stand before the cone of Mount Washington, which springs more than 
a thousand feet above us. The views of the ravines all along this 
route, as we pass over the sharpest portions of the ridge, and see 
them sweeping off each way from the path, are very exciting. And 
there is the great advantage in this approach to be noted, that if 
Mount Washington is clouded, and the other summits are clear, trav- 
ellers do not lose the sensations and the effects produced by standing 
for the first time on a mountain peak. 

Sometimes on the path from the Notch over the ridge, the cloud- 
effects add unspeakable interest to the journey. We have in mind, 
as we write, an attempt which we once made with a small party to 
gain the summit of Mount Washington, on a day when the ridge was 
clouded, though the wind was fair. We started hi hope, and were 
attended by sunshine nearly all the way through the forest. But on 
the top of Clinton there is rain and shoreless fog. Compelled to de- 
scend, we return after reaching the lower sunshine, in the belief that 
the squall has passed. But it is raining more furiously ; yet this 
time we press on, although unable to see a rod ahead, assured by the 
guide that it will clear within an hour. A slow and chilling ride for 
half a mile on the rocky ridge has begun to dishearten us. We 
think of returning. But what is this ? How has this huge cone 
leaped out of the gray, wet waste, and whence can it catch this flush 
of sunlight that sweeps over it ? It is the dome of Mount Pleasant 
which our horses' feet had just begun to climb. Hardly can we 
swing our hats and scream our cheers, when it is hidden. The frolic- 



322 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



some west wind tears open the curtain at our left, and shows Faby- 
an's, so snug in its nest of green. But see, on the right the vapors 
melt under our feet, and the unbroken forests start up as if created 
that instant in those vast valleys. They are concealed as soon as 
shown ; but the dull cloud about our heads is smitten with sunshine, 
and we are dazzled with silver dust. Now look up, — the whole sky 
is unveiled, and we stand in an ocean of vapor overarched by a can- 
opy of blazing blue. The bright wind breaks the clouds in a hundred 
places, scatters them, rolls them off, rolls them up, chases them far 
towards the horizon, mixes them with the azure, shows us billow after 
billow of land, from the Green Mountains to Katahdin, and at last 
sweeps off the mist from the pale green dome of Washington, and 
invites us to climb where the eye will traverse a circuit of six hun- 
dred miles. 

Oh ! what a joy it were in vigorous health, 

To have a body, (this our vital frame 

With shrinking sensibility endued, 

And all the nice regards of flesh and blood,) 

And to the elements surrender it 

As if it were a spirit! — How divine, 

The liberty for frail, for mortal man 

To roam at large among unpeopled glens 

And mountainous retirements, only trod 

By devious footsteps; regions consecrate 

To oldest time! and, reckless of the storm 

That keeps the raven quiet in her nest, 

Be as a presence or a motion, — one 

Among the many there; and while the mists 

Flying, and rainy vapors, call out shapes 

And phantoms from the crags and solid earth 

As fast as a musician scatters sounds 

Out of an instrument; and while the streams 

(As at a first creation and in haste 

To exercise their untried faculties) 

Descending from the region of the clouds, 

And starting from the hollows of the earth 

More multitudinous every moment, rend 

Then.' way before them, — what a joy to roam 

An equal among mightiest energies; 

And haply sometimes with articulate voice, 

Amid the deafening tumult, scarcely heard 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 323 



By him that utters it, exclaim aloud, 
" Be this continued so from day to day, 
Nor let the fierce commotion have an end, 
Ruinous though it be, from month to month! " 

By the Glen route we cross no subordinate peaks, and do not fol- 
low a ridge line from which we see summits towering here and there, 
but steadily ascend Mount Washington itself. In this way a more 
adequate conception is gained of its immense mass and majestic 
architecture. After we pass above the line of the carriage road to 
the barren portion of the mountain, there are grand pictures at the 
south and east of the Androscoggin Valley, and the long, heavily 
wooded Carter range. Indeed, nothing which the day can show will 
give more astonishment than the spectacle which opens after passing 
through the spectral forest, made up of acres of trees, leafless, peeled, 
and bleached, and riding out upon the ledge. Those w T ho make thus 
their first acquaintance with a mountain height will feel, in looking 
down into the immense hollow in which the Glen House is a dot, and 
off upon the vast green breastwork of Mount Carter, that language 
must be stretched and intensified to answer for the new sensations 
awakened. Splendid, glorious, amazing, sublime, with liberal sup- 
plies of interjections, are the words that usually gush to the lips ; but 
seldom is an adjective or exclamation uttered that interprets the 
scene, or coins the excitement and surge of feeling. We shall never 
forget the phrase which a friend once used, — an artist in expression 
as in feeling, and not given under strong stimulant to superlatives, — 
as he looked, for the first time, from the ledge upon the square miles 
of undulating wilderness, " See the tumultuous bombast of the land- 
scape ! " Yet the glory of the view is, after all, the four highest 
companion mountains of the range, Clay, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, 
that show themselves in a bending line beyond the tremendous gorge 
at the right of the path, absurdly called the " Gulf of Mexico," and 
are visible from their roots to their summits. These mountains are 
not seen on the ascent from the Notch, being hidden by the dome of 
Mount Washington itself. On the Glen path these grand forms 



324 THE WHITE HILLS. 

tower so near us that it seems at first as though a strong arm might 
throw a stone across the Grulf and hit them. There should be a rest- 
ing-place near the edge of the ravine, where parties could dismount 
and study these forms at leisure. Except by climbing to the ridge 





through the unbroken wilderness of the northern side, there is no 
such view to be had east of the Mississippi of mountain architecture 
and sublimity. They do not seem to be rocky institutions. Their 
lines have so much life that they appear to have just leaped from 
the deeps beneath the soil. We say to ourselves, these peaks are 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



325 



nature's struggle against petrifaction, the earth's cry for air. If the 
day is not entirely clear, if great -white clouds 

Are wandering in thick flocks among the mountains, 
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind, 

the shadows that leisurely trail along the sides of these Titans, or 
waver down their slopes, extinguishing their color, as it blots the dim 
green of their peaks, then their tawny shoulders, then the purple and 
gray of their bare ledges, and at last dulls the verdure of their lower 
forests, — thus playing in perpetual frolic with the light, — are more fas- 
cinating than anything which can be seen from the summit of Mount 
Washington itself, on the landscape below. 

But let us not begin by disparaging at all what is to be seen on 
the summit. Suppose that we could be lifted suddenly a mile and a 
quarter above the sea level in the air, and could be sustained there 
without exertion. That is the privilege we have in standing on the 
summit of Mount Washington, about sixty-three hundred feet above 
the ocean. Only the view is vastly more splendid than any that 
could be presented to us if we could hang poised on wings at the 
same elevation above a level country, or should see nothing beneath 
us but " the wrinkled sea." For we are not only upheld at such a 
height, but we stand in close fellowship with the noblest forms which 
the substance of the world has assumed under our northern skies. 
We estimate our height from the ocean level, and it is on a wave that 
we are lifted, — a tremendous ground-swell fifteen miles long, which 
stiffened before it could subside, or fling its boiling mass upon the 
bubbling plain. We are perched on the tip of a jet in the centre of 
it, tossed up five hundred feet higher than any other spout from its 
tremendous surge, and which was arrested and is now fixed forever 
as a witness of the passions that have heaved more furiously in the 
earth's bosom than any which the sea has felt, and as a " tower 
of observance " for sweeping with the eye the beauty that overlays 
the globe. 

44 | 



326 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



It may be that this billow of land was cooled by the sea when it 
first arose, and that these highest peaks around us were the first por- 
tions of New England that saw the light. On a clear morning or 
evening the silvery gleam of the Atlantic is seen on the southeastern 
horizon. The waves, that form only a transitory flash in the land- 
scape which the mountain shows its guests, once broke in foam over 
the rocks that now are beaten only by the winds which the Atlantic 
conjures, and covered by the snows that mimic the whiteness of the 
Atlantic surf, out of which their substance may have been drawn. 
And, since the retreat of the sea, what forces have been patiently at 
work to cover the stalwart monarchs near us with the beauty which 
they reveal ! We call them barren, but there is a richer display of 
the creative power and art on Mount Adams yonder than on any 
number of square miles in the lowlands of New England equal to the 
whole surface of that mountain. The noblest trees of New England 
are around its base, and there are firs on the ledge from which its 
peak springs that are not more than two inches high. Alpine and Lap- 
land plants grow in the crevices of its rocks, and adorn the edges of its 
ravines. Since the sea-wave washed its cone, the light and the frosts 
have been gnawing the shingly schist, to give room and sustenance for 
the lichens that have tinted every foot of its loosely-shingled slopes 
with stains whose origin is more mysterious than any colors which a 
painter combines, — as mysterious as the painter's genius itself. The 
storms of untold thousands of years have chiselled lines of expression 
in the mountain, whose grace and charm no landscape gardening 
on a lowland can rival ; and the bloom of the richest conservatory 
would look feeble in contrast with the hues that often in morning and 
evening, or in the pomp of autumn and the whiter desolation, have 
glowed upon it, as though the whole art of God was concentrated hi 
making it outblush the rose, or dim the sapphire with its flame. 

The first effect of standing on the summit of Mount Washington is 
a bewildering of the senses at the extent and lawlessness of the spec- 
tacle. It is as though we were looking upon a chaos. The land is 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



327 



tossed into a tempest. But in a few moments we become accustomed 
to' this, and begin to feel the joy of turning round and sweeping a 
horizon line that in parts is drawn outside of New England. Then 
we can begin to inquire into the particulars of the stupendous dio- 
rama. Northward, if the air is not thick with haze, we look beyond 
the Canada line. Southward, the " parded land " stretches across 
the borders of Massachusetts, before it melts into the horizon. Do 
you see a dim blue pyramid on the far northeast, looking scarcely more 
substantial than gossamer, but keeping its place stubbornly, and cut- 
ting the yellowish horizon with the hue of Damascus steel ? It is 
Katahdin looming out of the central wilderness of Maine. Almost 
in the same line on the southwest, and nearly as far away, do you 
see another filmy angle in the base of the sky ? It is Monadnoc, 
which would feel prouder than Mont Blanc, or the frost-sheeted 
Chimborazo, or the topmost spire of the Himalaya, if it could know 
that the genius of Mr. Emerson has made it the noblest mountain in 
literature. The nearer range of the Green Mountains are plainly 
visible ; and behind them Camel's Hump and Mansfield tower in the 
direction of Lake Champlain. The silvery patch on the north, that 
looks at first like a small pond, is Umbagog ; a little farther away 
due south a section of the mirror of Winnipiseogee glistens. Sebago 
flashes on the southeast, and a little nearer, the twin Lovell lakes, 
that lie more prominently on the map of our history than on the land- 
scape. Next, the monotony of the scene is broken by observing the 
various forms of the mountains that are thick as " meadow-mole 
hills," — the great wedge of Lafayette, the long, thin ridge of Carter, 
the broad-based and solid Pleasant Mountain, the serrated summit of 
Chocorua, the beautiful cone of Kiarsarge, the cream-colored Strat- 
ford peaks, as near alike in size and shape as two Dromios. Then 
the pathways of the rivers interest us. The line of the Connecticut 
we can follow from its birth near Canada to the point where it is hid- 
den by the great Franconia wall. Its water is not visible, but often 
in the morning a line of fog lies for miles over the lower land, 
sounterfeiting the serpentine path of its blue water that bounds 



328 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



two states. Two large curves of the Androscoggin we can see. 
Broken portions of the Saco lie like lumps of light upon the open 
valley to the west of Kiarsarge. The sources of the Merrimack are 
on the farther slope of a mountain that seems to be not more than the 
distance of a rifle-shot. Directly under our feet lies the cold Lake 
of the Clouds, whose water plunges down the wild path of the Am- 
monoosuc, and falls more than a mile before the ocean drinks it at 
New Haven. And in the sides of the mountain every wrinkle east 
or west that is searched by the sunbeams, or cooled by shadows, is 
the channel of a bounty that swells one of the three great streams 
of New England. 

Fast abides this constant giver, 
Pouring many a cheerful river. 

And lastly, we notice the various beauty of the valleys that slope off 
from the central range. No two of them are articulated with the 
mountain by the same angles and curves. Stairways of charming 
slope and bend lead down into their sweet and many-colored loveli- 
ness and bounty. 

Next, if the day is favorable, we notice the shadows. People in 
cities, who never see the extent and outline of a cloud-shadow, can 
have no idea of the beauty of a range of hills, upon which the lights 
and shades " march and countermarch in glorious apparition." But 
this is nothing to the excitement, we may almost say the intoxica- 
tion, of seeing from a mountain-top a huge cloud, miles in breadth, 
spanning a valley, shedding twilight upon half a dozen villages at 
once, sweeping along, chased by a broader flood of splendor, to 
darken for a moment the whole ridge on whose crown you stand, 
and still flying on before the west wind to pour its fleet gloom over 
range after range, till it pauses in the warmer and peaceful spaces 
near the eastern horizon. 

And the still shadows it is in many respects an equal privilege to 
see. Sydney Smith tells us that he once looked upon a small picture 
by an eminent artist, in company with an enthusiastic connoisseur, 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



329 



who said to him, " Immense breadth of light and shade, sir, in this pic- 
ture ! " " Yes," said the wit, greatly to the critic's disgust, " about 
half an inch." In the city or level country we know what a shadow 
is as cast from a large tree, or from a building, or a church-spire. 
But think of a mighty mountain-trough, a mile broad and fifteen hun- 
dred feet deep, painted in a clear afternoon, half in gray and half in 
gold ! Think of a pyramid, more than a thousand feet above the 
ridge, flaming on one side while the shadow of the other falls off upon 
miles of sloping forest ! Think, as the sun sets clear, of seeing the 
outlines of half a dozen huge mountains photographed five times their 
height, partly in the valleys below, and partly upon the ranges be- 
yond ! It is thus that Nature's breadth of light and shadow, her 
actual contrasts in miles which the artist must crowd into inches, 
are shown on Mount Washington in clear weather by the late and 
early sun. The most impressive spectacle of this kind is the shadow 
of Mount Washington itself, far and still upon the furrowed landscape. 
On a clear morning of midsummer it reaches beyond the Franconia 
line, and its apex rests upon the side of the broad Moosehillock. 
Thence it shrinks while the sun rides higher, more sharply defined as 
it contracts, till in the middle of the forenoon it subsides into a long 
irregular image of the range upon the Ammonoosuc intervale near 
below. But in a cloudless evening, when there is no haze on the 
west, we can see it as a dusky triangle, reaching over and beyond 
the Carter range, and resting upon the Androscoggin meadows. 
Thence it moves, displacing the day from hill-sides and valleys by its 
lengthening sides and sombre peak, till it reaches the eastern horizon, 
where it actually mounts upon the mists, and overtops the solid hills 
with its phantom pyramid, exultant for a moment in the very fall of 
the sun which it has conquered, before it fades in the general gloom. 
Those who have once seen this spectacle, ask for no other reward for 
all that it costs in labor and discomfort to pass the night on Mount 
Washington. 

Indeed, the most unfavorable time for visiting the summit is in the 
noon of a summer day when the air is hazy. There are no shadows 



330 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



then, no wonders of color, no vague reaches of distance. And yet, 
because the air is genial and the cone is not veiled by mist, such a 
day is generally accounted propitious by travellers. It is better to 
encounter fogs, or sudden showers, especially if one has ever enjoyed 
before an unobstructed prospect from the peak, than to see the land- 
scape spiritless under a sultry noon. Cloud-effects are the most sur- 
prising and fascinating pageants which the ascent of the mountain 
can disclose. Let Mr. Buskin teach us that " there is no effect of 
sky possible in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be 
seen among the hills ; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for- 
ever invisible and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, mani- 
fested among the hills in the course of one day. The mere power of 
familiarity with the clouds, of walking with them and above them, 
alters and renders clear our whole conception of the baseless archi- 
tecture of the sky ; and for the beauty of it, there is more in a single 
wreath of early cloud, pacing its way up an avenue of pines, or paus- 
ing among the points of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that 
fill the arched sky of the plains from one horizon to the other. And 
of the nobler cloud-manifestations, — the breaking of their troublous 
seas against the crags, their black spray sparkling with lightning ; 
or the going forth of the morning along their pavements of moving 
marble, level-laid between dome and dome of snow ; — of these things 
there can be as little imagination or understanding in an inhabitant 
of the plains as of the scenery of another planet than his own." 

Certainly the richest pictures that rise to us, as we write, out of 
the memory of more than a score of visits to Mount Washington, are 
combined out of clouds. We see again the gray scud driving over 
the peak as we approach it, and as we ride up into its thickening 
mass, feel the force of the line, 

From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed; 

we remember how dispirited the visitors on the summit seem in the 
chilly gloom, and we see the fog filled with yellow light, then thin- 
ning away and knitting itself together in an instant, but soon blown 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 331 



apart by the breeze to let the color of the nearer forests, and then of 
the lowlands, glow through, dimly first and confused, in another sec- 
ond distinct and blinding, but soon orderly and glorious, as perhaps 
the realities of another existence may break upon saintly eyes that 
emerge from the mists of death. We recall the strange gathering of 
vapors out of a cloudless air in the early morning, and how they hang 
in a circle five miles in diameter over the dome of Washington, and 
a thousand feet above, while elsewhere the blue is undimmed, — a 
magnificent canopy above the rocky throne of New Hampshire. We 
behold again the settling of heavy clouds over the slopes as we de- 
scend, wrapping us in blackness of darkness ; and, hastening on 
through furious gusts, we come to the lower fringes of the tempest, 
and look back and up to see it crouched over the ravines of Clay, 
from which vast sheets of vapor are swept by the wind, their lower 
edges sulphurous as they rush into the light, and now and then the 
whole mass whirling apart to show the dark masses of Madison and 
Adams towering in treble height through the gloom. And then such 
glimpses of the valleys ! Sinai behind and Beulah before ! We be- 
hold once more, too, with the mind's eye, the thin veil into which a 
dogday shower has wasted itself, that hangs wet and still in the sun 
before the three mountains which rise from the Gulf of Mexico, — a 
silver sheen dimming and adorning their sinewy bulk. We are over- 
taken by a rain that rages against us out of the west ; and after it is 
spent, we see a rainbow arching over the long line of the Carter 
range, and painting its blue-black forests at each end with variegated 
flames. We stand, also, on the summit in the morning when the sky 
is clear, and view a wide plain of billowy mist 

rolling on 

Under the curdling winds, and islanding 
The peak whereon we stand. 

And we look around, and see the neighboring summits jutting like > 
wise above the foam, which rolls, and tosses, and plunges, and splin- 
ters into spray, as though with its milky spume it was appointed to 
mimic the passion of the sea and the majesty of Niagara. If one has 



832 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



made several visits to the top of Mount Washington, he is peculiarly 
fortunate, if the scenery shown to him enables him to give distinctness 
to most of the pictures in the remarkable panorama which Percival 
thus unrolls : — 

Ye Clouds who are the ornament of heaven ; 

Who give to it its gayest shadowings, 

And its most awful glories; ye who roll 

In the dark tempest, or at dewy evening 

Hang low in tenderest beauty; ye who, ever 

Changing your Protean aspects, now are gathered 

Like fleecy piles, when the mid-sun is brightest, 

Even in the height of heaven, and there repose, 

Solemnly calm, without a visible motion, 

Hour after hour, looking upon the earth 

With a serenest smile; — or ye who, rather, 

Heaped in those sulphury masses, heavily 

Jutting above their bases, like the smoke 

Poured from a furnace or a roused volcano, 

Stand on the dun horizon, threatening 

Lightning and storm, — who, lifted from the hills, 

March onward to the zenith, ever darkening, 

And heaving into more gigantic towers 

And mountainous piles of blackness, — who then roar 

With the collected winds within your womb, 

Or the far uttered thunders, — who ascend 

Swifter and swifter, till wide overhead 

Your vanguards curl and toss upon the tempest 

Like the stirred ocean on a reef of rocks 

Just topping o'er its waves, while deep below 

The pregnant mass of vapor and of flame 

Rolls with an awful pomp, and grimly lowers, 

Seeming to the struck eye of fear, the car 

Of an offended spirit, whose swart features 

Glare through the sooty darkness, fired with vengeance, 

And ready with uplifted hand to smite 

And scourge a guilty nation; ye who lie, 

After the storm is over, far away, 

Crowning the dripping forests with the arch 

Of beauty, such as lives alone in heaven, 

Bright daughter of the sun, bending around 

From mountain unto mountain like the wreath 

Of victory, or like a banner telling 

Of joy and gladness; ye who round the moon 

Assemble, when she sits in the mid-sky 

In perfect brightness, and encircle her 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 333 



With a fair wreath of all aerial dyes; 

Ye who, thus hovering round her, shine like mountains 

Whose tops are never darkened, but remain, 

Centuries and countless ages, reared for temples 

Of purity and light; or ye who crowd 

To hail the new-born day, and hang for him, 

Above his ocean couch, a canopy 

Of all inimitable hues and colors, 

Such as are only pencilled by the hands 

Of the unseen ministers of earth and air, 

Seen only in the tinting of the clouds, 

And the soft shadowing of plumes and flowers; 

Or ye who, following in his funeral train, 

Light up your torches at his sepulchre, 

And open on us through the clefted hills 

Far glances into glittering worlds beyond 

The twilight of the grave, where all is light, 

Golden and glorious light, too full and high 

For mortal eye to gaze on, stretching out 

Brighter and ever brighter, till it spread, 

Like one wide, radiant ocean without bounds, 

One infinite sea of glory: — thus, ye clouds, 

And in innumerable other shapes 

Of greatness or of beauty, ye attend us, 

To give to the wide arch above us Life 

And all its changes. Thus it is to us 

A volume full of wisdom, but without ye 

One awful uniformity had ever 

With too severe a majesty oppressed us. 

In order to see, within a few hours, the most impressive spectacles 
which the ridge displays, visitors should devote a whole afternoon to 
the summit, and stay all night, in the hope of seeing the sun set and 
rise. The first visit of this kind that we made was reported, in part, 
as follows, for an editorial friend : — 

" I send you a greeting, this morning, from the cupola of New 
Hampshire. If, perchance, you are suffering from heat when this 
missive reaches you, let your eyes cool themselves by reading that 
just outside the Tip-Top House the mercury is at 34 degrees, while 
the wind is sweeping in rage over the peak of the burly monarch. 
Eastward a gale would find no such elevation this side the Alps ; 
westward none till it should strike the Rocky Mountains. I passed 

45 



334 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



last night here. This is my seventh ascent of Mount Washington ; 
and yet, though I was once here so late as sunset, I never till now- 
slept on the summit. 

" Yesterday promised so well for the excursion that I could not 
resist the temptation. The temperature in the valley was a pleasant 
summer heat. The ride on one of the ponies from the Glen up the 
regular slope of the carriage-path, which has now turned the ledge, — 
thus overcoming the most perilous part of the rocky ascent, as it had 
before obviated the unpleasant mud and corduroy of the forest, — was 
very easy. Gaming the ridge, after passing through the bleached 
forest, in which one ought not to be surprised if he should be sud- 
denly greeted by the witches of Macbeth, and just where the first 
sublimity breaks upon the eye, — the deep green walls of the Carter 
Mountain behind ; the pebbly path of the Peabody, and the tortuous 
flashes of the Androscoggin below ; and the tawny spires of Adams, 
Jefferson, and Madison in front, soaring precipitous out of the luxu- 
riant forests, — we felt the keen breath of a norther, which promised 
a rude reception on the summit. We rose, indeed, by climates as 
well as ridges. It was July in Gorham ; late September on the 
ledge ; November at the apex. The pony I rode seemed to have an 
appetite for sublimity bathed in Arctic air. It was his first ascent 
of the mountain ; and he clambered and snorted with evident glee, 
seizing every opportunity to trot among the sharp rocks, — a process 
which served more to exhilarate him than to convey exquisite pleasure 
to the rider. 

" But if we met a rough reception from old Boreas, we had a 
warm one from the enterprising keepers of the Summit House. Hos- 
pitality at sixty-three hundred feet above the Atlantic is a virtue to 
be celebrated. Suppose you do pay a dollar for the shelter, the fire, 
and the excellent dinner furnished to you on the bleak crest of New 
England. What do these men undergo to invite that donation from 
you ? Do they not duplicate their winter ? Do they not pitch their 
tents for months higher than the eagles will build their nests ? Do 
they not make their home for dajs among blinding fogs and sweeping 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 335 



sleet ? Do they not pass wild nights away from all human fellow- 
ship, when the rains that feed the Saco and swell the Connecticut 
beat and divide on the roof of their cabin, and the blasts tug with 
infuriate breath at the loose rock-tiles that sheathe this savage dome ? 
Do they not make their home among lightnings that often spout 
around them amid gusts that drown the thunder ? The benefit is 
so great, and the toil of the earning so severe, that we travellers 
ought to pay our dollar with no mercenary abatement of gratitude to 
these spirited mountaineers, who have organized their Yankee ' St. 
Bernard ' hospitality on the cold crest of our north. In fact, one of 
our hosts, with his bearded face, his careful gait, and those serious 
eyes set in a head that contains more of the wild traditions of the 
mountains than any other among us, looks like a monk. There are 
faithful fry-ers, too, in the establishment, as the copious supplies of 
doughnuts attest, but they keep themselves hidden in the kitchen 
department. 

" Upon the summit I had the fortune to meet two cherished Bos- 
ton friends. One hurried to our mountain passes to listen to the 
reverberations that are rolling around New England, since the light- 
ning of his Fourth of July Address. By his serene appearance he 
justifies much more the title which Mr. Willis has given him, — 6 The 
Apostle of Friendship,' — than the Boanerges character attributed to 
him by the political journals hostile to his oration. With him you 
were kind enough to send us, also, one of your judges, as fitted by 
the polished delicacy of his taste to pronounce on those charms of 
scenery in which no region of this hill-country will ever be bankrupt, 
as by his acumen to interpret and apply the slippery laws of insol- 
vency. What a privilege, after the wit-seasoned meal, to clamber 
over the old cone with such companions, and look abroad upon New 
England, — far off beyond the northerly borders of the Connecticut ; 
far south to the mouth of the Saco ; east to where Katahdin drives 
his spike into the sky, and west almost to the Catskills ! 

" The larger part of the afternoon was devoted to the great ra- 
vines. The mass of Washington cannot be appreciated until we see 



336 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



what enormous gullies have been cut into it, still leaving it more 
bulky than any other four mountains of the range. There is am- 
ple time, we found, in two hours, to go to the edges of the three 
grandest chasms which give character to the mountain when seen 
from the south and east, and which can scarcely be seen at all from 
either of the bridle-paths. The first of these, ' The Grand Gulf,' has 
the sheerest precipices, the most savage-looking debris, and the 
sharpest pinnacles. I felt special interest in studying its lines, on 
account of the admiration I had felt for Mr. Coleman's painting of 
its romantic ruins. Tuckerman's Ravine, which lies a little farther 
to the west, is a far more spacious rent in the mountain. I shall 
make an excursion into it the subject of a separate letter ; and there- 
fore will pass to i The Gulf of Mexico,' the third of the ravines, to 
which we devoted the most time. We were obliged to take care, as 
we stood on its perilous edge, that the wind did not sweep us from 
our footing into its depths of air. This gulf is a cleft between Wash- 
ington and Mount Jefferson. Its western wall, richly marked by 
water-lines and ravaged by landslides, is called Mount Clay. It 
balances on the north the deeply cut Tuckerman's Ravine on the 
south. Seen from the bottom, the last is the grander. Looking 
down from the top, the Gulf of Mexico is the more terrible. And 
while the first has only even walls to rim its desolation, the last is 
crowned by Mount Jefferson, and commands a grand view also of 
Adams and Madison. And the afternoon is the time to see it, — when 
the sun pours a sheet of light, as yesterday, up the whole southerly 
wall of chippy rock, tinged with pale-green lichen, and the bottom of 
the pit lies dark under the grim guard of the three peaks that bend 
around it on the northeast, and have lost the sun. Those that have 
not seen this view of the Gulf of Mexico, in a clear afternoon, are 
unacquainted with one of the grandest spectacles which the summit 
of Mount Washington affords. 

" But let us return to the house, and wait patiently for sunset — for 
the purple that we shall see crowning a score of ridges ; for the slow 
march of the pointed shadows of our range up the opposite slopes of 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 337 



Carter, and off towards Conway, dislodging the day from the hill-tops, 
as they move south and east ; and for the calm sinking of the sun 
beneath a horizon a hundred miles away, twenty minutes after the 
valleys have seen his exit. Alas for our expectation ! About seven 
in the evening, the north wind, which had dashed against us all day, 
came upon us in all 'pomp and circumstance,' with banners and 
streamers flying. The scud settled to our level, and drove past us 
with fury, to the keen fife-music of the gale. The thermometer was 
at about the freezing point. At first, it was a severe disappoint- 
ment. But we soon found that we had been robbed of one privilege 
to receive perhaps a greater. The old mountain was determined to 
show us his teeth, and to snarl a little. What fascinating glimpses 
of green were given through frequent rifts in the hurrying fog ! How 
intense, far off towards the western horizon, blazed a small lake, or 
fragment of river, on which the sun, hidden from us by the clouds, was 
shining, — a solid lump of diamond light, — the great carbuncle, per- 
haps, of the mountain tradition ! And then what splendid colors in 
the furious mists ! Now they would thin away, and be transfused 
with yellow, as they were blown southwards. Now they would coil 
around us lurid, as if volumes of fire-tipped smoke, surging up from a 
burning world. For a moment they would be dissipated by the sun- 
shine, melting utterly away in cold silvery flickers, and then would 
close around us again thick, turbulent, and gray. Just as the sun 
was disappearing, we saw his ruddy disc, through a rift, for a min- 
ute ; and bade him farewell in the hope of greeting him in an un- 
clouded and peaceful east, when he should return, after sinking into 
the Pacific, dawning on China, and kindling the sheeted walls and 
turrets of the Himalaya with morning gold. 

" And now shall we lose the moon-rise ? No ; the propitious va- 
pors opened in season, as they did at sunset. About nine they began 
to thin away, and drove southwards into the eyes of the moon, break- 
ing in spectral battalions on its solid orb, to be steeped in amber for 
a moment, and then whiffed into nothingness. After a time, the 
heavens were swept clean, and the moon moved patiently up among 



338 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



the constellations, looking serenely upon the gulfs, and pits, and 
blasted peaks of the mountains, that are less ravaged and desolate 
than the continent which her own pensive halo swathes. But what 
are all the grandeurs of these pimple-hills to that calm, cold splendor 
that looks through the fresh-swept air, — that tremendous circuit of 
stars, from the nearest of which our globe is invisible and unsuspected, 
whose light, unshaken by our blustering Boreas, converges on this 
lonely peak, — that awful dome which floats in immensity on the 
pulses of impalpable force ! I did not expect to get a sense of the 
height of Mount Washington by looking up from its roof, rather than 
by looking down. But so it was. I have never, in standing on the 
edge of the ravine near Mount Monroe, or upon the plateau that 
crowns the Tuckerman gulf, gained such a feeling of its loftiness and 
loneliness, as in looking up, last night, when the valleys were veiled, 
to the Dipper and the Zenith. Half a minute at a time was all my 
brain could bear. I can conceive how Prometheus, chained on ' the 
frosty Caucasus,' could endure the vulture, and the cold, and the 
pelting hail, but I cannot imagine how the poets strengthened him 
for the calm and brilliant nights, and the terrible sense of space they 
brought to him. To be fastened one night on Mount Washington 
alone, compelled to face the firmament, I am sure would almost 
crush my reason. 

" In fact, I have not yet recovered from the glimpses I took. 
The wind swept all night over us in an unabating gale ; and as I 
lay under the blankets of the Summit House, that view of the sky 
haunted me, and drove away sleep. I seemed to have a sensation 
of the earth's motion, — that we were lying in that little fore top of 
New England, while our planet ship was scudding, twelve hundred 
miles a minute, over the star-islanded immensity. 

" And other terrors connected with darkness and storm on Mount 
Washington were present also. The roaring wind recalled Shel- 
ley's lines, — 

Listen, listen, Mary mine, 

To the whisper of the Apennine; 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 339 



It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar, 
Or like the sea on a northern shore, 
Heard in its raging ebb and flow- 
By the captives pent in the cave below. 
The Apennine in the light of day- 
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray, 

But when night comes, a chaos dread 

On the dim starlight then is spread, 

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm. 

The wintry wrath of the gale, and the occasional gloom of the thick- 
ening scud, seemed the more dreadful when I thought, — may there 
not be death in it ? is it not possible that some travellers, in search 
of the Summit House, have lost the path since sunset, and are in 
danger of perishing among the wild rocks ? You know that suffering 
and death are giving Mount Washington a tragical celebrity. Then 
was the time to feel the meaning of that pile of stones, but a few rods 
below the inn, which tells where Miss Bourne, overtaken by night 
and fog, and exhausted by cold, breathed out her life into the bleak 
cloud. She started from the Glen House, with her uncle and cousin, 
in the afternoon of a lovely day of mid-September, to walk on the 
carriage-road as far as the first opening that permits a wide easterly 
view. Arrived there, although they had no guide, they were tempted 
on towards the summit by the inspiriting air and sky. But fog at 
sunset settled over the path ; the wind became fierce and cutting ; 
the peak seemed to recede as they advanced ; and the young lady 
sank at last exhausted in the darkness, within hailing distance of the 
hotel, and died about ten o'clock. I could not keep out of my mind 
the picture of that group, — the building of the stony wall to protect 
the dying girl from the fury of the tempest, the agony of the rela- 
tives as they found that her life was ebbing, their horror amid the 
darkness, — for there was not a ray of starlight to show them her fea- 
tures, — and after the spirit had fled, their awful watch until morning ! 
I have compared the public houses here to the inn on the St. Ber- 
nard. And when we think of the disaster just referred to ; when we 
look off into the ravine, sloping towards Fabyan's, where the English- 



340 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



man, Strickland, perished in October ; when we see the spot, in full 
view of the Glen House, where Dr. Ball lay helpless and freezing in 
the snow, after two nights' exposure, without food or fire, in an Octo- 
ber storm ; when we recall the number of persons whom Mr. Hall, 
one of the present landlords of the summit, has saved from impend- 
ing death, and remember that the bones of an elderly traveller,* lost 
on the ridge last summer, lie bleaching now undiscovered, — who can 
say that the service which the dogs of the St. Bernard have ren- 
dered, might not be repeated on Mount Washington, if the houses 
should be supplied with some of those noble animals, and should be 
kept open a few weeks later in the autumn ? 

" The wildness of the night affected my pleasure in seeing the sun- 
rise, a few hours ago. A mist lay over all the valleys. The moun- 
tains heaved their sharp ridges out of an ocean of stagnant foam. A 
wide bank of dingy fog lay along the eastern sky. Over this arti- 
ficial horizon we saw the advent of the morning, — the wide flush of 
red around a third of the vast circuit, the bubbling of rosy glory over 
its fleecy rim, the peep of the burning disc, and the gradual mount- 
ing of the light, showing how 

tenderly the haughty day 
Fills his blue urn with fire. 

The scene interpreted these new lines of Mr. Emerson, and also 
recalled to me the passage from Browning's £ Pippa Passes ' : — 

Day! 

Faster and more fast, 

O'er night's brim, day boils at last; 

Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim, 

Where spurting and supprest it lay — 

For not a froth-flake touched the rim 

Of yonder gap in the solid gray 

Of the eastern cloud, an hour away; 

But forth one wavelet, then another, curled, 

Till the whole sunrise, not to be supprest, 

Rose, reddened, and its seething breast 

Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world. 

* Mr. Benjamin Chandler of Delawai'e, whose remains, after lying nearly a year not 
far from the summit, were discovered a few weeks after this letter was written. 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



341 



" The dawn was magnificent ; but when I ascend Mount Washing- 
ton again, it will be to see the night. that the great comet would / 
come, to be watched from such an observatory ! And now let me 
say 4 good-bye ' to my pleasant companions, the eloquent ex-orator 
and the rapier- witted judge, who are going down by the Crawford 
path ; to our excellent hosts ; and to you, my friend, in your edi- 
torial sanctum, as I turn my face away from the billowy majesty 
that surrounds the summit, for the descent towards the Glen and 
Gorham." 

And we well remember how sublime the cloud-scenery was to 
which that lonely downward walk, after our first acquaintance with 
night and sunrise from the summit, introduced us. At seven o'clock, 
with the exception of the fog-bank in the east, the sky was clear. 
But as early as ten, the air was filled, as by miracle, with piles and 
ranges of snowy vapor, with whose highest peaks the cone of Chim- 
borazo could compete in color alone. " We are little apt, in watch- 
ing the changes of a mountainous range of cloud, to reflect that the 
masses of vapor which compose it are huger and higher than any 
mountain range of the earth ; that the distance between mass and 
mass are not yards of air traversed in an instant by the flying foam, 
t>ut valleys of changing atmosphere leagues over ; that the slow mo- 
tion of ascending curves, which we can scarcely trace, is a boiling 
energy of exulting vapor rushing into the heaven a thousand feet in 
a minute ; and that the toppling angle whose sharp edge almost es- 
capes notice in the multitudinous forms around it, is a nodding preci- 
pice of storms, three thousand feet from base to summit. It is not 
until Ave have actually compared the forms of the sky with the hill 
ranges of the earth, and seen the soaring Alp overtopped and buried 
in one surge of the sky, that we begin to conceive or appreciate the 
colossal scale of the phenomena of the latter. But of this there can 
be no doubt in the mind of any one accustomed to trace the forms of 
clouds among hill ranges, — as it is there a demonstrable and evident 
fact, that the space of vapor visibly extended over an ordinarily 

46 



342 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



cloudy sky is not less, from the point nearest to the observer to the 
horizon, than twenty leagues ; that the size of every mass of separate 
form, if it be at all largely divided, is to be expressed in terms of 
miles ; and that every boiling heap of illuminated mist in the nearer 
sky is an enormous mountain, fifteen or twenty thousand feet in 
height, six or seven miles over in illuminated surface, furrowed by a 
thousand colossal ravines, torn by local tempests into peaks and prom- 
ontories, and changing its features with the majestic velocity of the 
volcano." And thus the memory of the lurid sunset and the mar- 
vellous cloud-diorama of the forenoon have given us a fresh appre- 
ciation of the passage from Bayard Taylor's " Hymn to the Air" : — 

What is the scenery of Earth to thine V 

Here all is fixed in everlasting shapes, 
But where the realms of gorgeous Cloudland shine, 

There stretch afar thy sun-illumined capes, 
Embaying reaches of the amber seas 

Of sunset, on whose tranquil bosom lie 

The happy islands of the upper sky, 
The halcyon shores of thine Atlantides. 
Anon the airy headlands change, and drift 

Into sublimer forms, that slowly heave . 

Their toppling masses up the front of eve, 
Crag heaped on crag, with many a fiery rift, 
And hoary summits, throned beyond the reach 

Of Alp or Caucasus; again they change, 

And down the vast, interminable range 
Of towers and palaces, transcending each 
The workmanship of Fable-Land, we see 

The " crystal hyaline " of Heaven's own floor — 
The radiance of the far Eternity 
Eeflected on thy shore ! 

Everybody that visits the eastern side of the mountains hears of 
the snow-arch in one of the ravines of Mount Washington. It is, 
doubtless, to be ranked first among the curiosities which can tempt a 
pedestrian. Parties can descend to it with a guide from the hotel on 
the summit of Mount Washington — a distance of a mile and a quar- 
ter, — or can climb to it from the Glen — a distance of not less than 
five miles. It has been our good fortune to make four visits to it 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



343 



in successive years. Of the first of these we wrote a record for the 
press under the title of " A Dinner Party under the Snow- Arch of , 
Mount Washington." It runs thus : — 

" For several seasons I have wished to visit 4 Tuckerinan's Ravine.' 
The bare, thin, and curling edge of its southwestern wall, as seen 
from the Glen House, is one of the most striking shows of that 
fascinating spot. The rock-ribbed organization of the hills is grandly 
revealed by it ; while the spirit of mountain strength, the enormous 
vitality that is compressed into the resisting power of a great ridge, 
is suggested there more intensely, perhaps, than in any other moun- 
tain line or feature of this region. The ravine is hollowed out of a 
spur of Washington, and the curving wall I speak of seems to be the 
bent and firmly braced arm of the mountain, defying the force of 
gravity and the gnawing frosts, with the challenge, 4 Do your best, 
with all your tugs and beaks, against my granite muscles and persist- 
ent will ! ' One is continually tempted from a distance to explore a 
nook that wears the expression of such character. 

" Moreover, there is a very striking picture in 1 Oakes' White 
Mountain Scenery,' of the summit of Washington rising over Tucker- 
man's Ravine. It is the grandest sketch of the whole series, and I 
have often wished to verify it. Possibly, the publishers, Messrs. 
Crosby, Nichols & Co. will not seriously object to the liberty I shall 
take here, of giving gratis an attestation of the accuracy of that view, 
and a commendation of the work itself. Then again, the accounts 
last summer of a snow-arch in the ravine remaining so late as August, 
made me regret my inability to explore it, and resolve to climb into 
it, another year. 

" At last, I have been able to do so under most favorable circum- 
stances. Mr. Thompson, of the Glen House, has opened a horse- 
path from a point on the new Mount Washington carriage-road, to a 
lake at the foot of the ravine. A small party of gentlemen was 
invited by one of the prominent officers of the carriage-road company 
to try this path on foot, and dine with him at the snow-bank in the 
rocky gulf, if it still lingered in the lap of J uly . A more competent 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



or inspiring leader of such an excursion than Mr. M. it would be im- 
possible to find. He is the soul of the enterprise that is engineering 
a wagon turnpike up Mount Washington. With unflickering enthu- 
siasm and unfaltering energy, he is writing his name in wide, smooth, 
zigzag lines, from the base to the cone of old Agiochook, as Napoleon 
engraved his upon the Simplon. The work, it is thought, will be 
finished in the course of another summer. 

" Our party started from the Glen House about nine o'clock, in 
high spirits, notwithstanding the heavy fog that hung over the moun- 
tain and filled the ravine. We had an excellent opportunity to see 
how the carriage-road is made, and what a work it is to finish it up 
from the roughness of the primeval wilderness to the wide macadam- 
ized track, over which we first drove a double wagon for two miles. 
Leaving the carriage, we led a pony over a great ledge which the 
workmen were blasting, feeling none the easier for knowing that the 
fuse was burning while we crossed. In less than a minute after, old 
Washington and Carter were shouting to each other in mockery of 
the discharge. We had the privilege, also, of seeing how neatly and 
comfortably Yankee workmen contrive to five in rough log-houses two 
thousand feet above the level of Coos County. Then we struck off 
from the carriage-way to try Thompson's new path on foot. 
the joy of a tramp through the aboriginal forest in such sweet air ! 
The smell of the fresh earth, the perfume of the plants and bark, the 
spring of the moss under the feet, the sense of elasticity and freedom 
diffused through the whole frame, the note of the wood-robin, the 
pipe and trill of the sweet-whistler, the luscious gurgle of hidden rills, 
the flash and music of merry cascades, and, when the fog is swept 
away, the spots of sunshine necking the path, the bewitching confu- 
sion of light and shadows on the trunks and boughs and among the 
leaves, as the bracing breeze makes them dance and sing, and added 
to all, the consciousness of nearness to the proudest summits of New 
England, and the hope of catching soon their glorious crowns looking 
down over savage cliffs and across grim gulfs of rock, — what pleasure 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



345 



of the senses is so pure ? what medicine so kindly as the subtile elixir 
with which Nature thus, taking us to her bosom again, delicately 
searches every fibre of the jaded frame, strings and reanimates the 
nerves, and pervades the whole being with an any joy in mere 
physical existence ? 

" Our whole party were truly in mountain spirits. One of the 
young engineers with us had walked from the top of Washington that 
morning, — starting from an aerial island where the sun was rising 
over a sea of mist, which the wind was rolling and swaying in mighty 
surges and troughs of vapor, mimicking in the fleecy fog the tremen- 
dous ground-swell and turmoil of the sea. The contractor of the 
road was with us, taking the excursion as pastime, for the pleasure 
of conquering the ruggedness of the mountain by his iron muscles, in 
addition to the satisfaction of slowly planing off the rocky knots of its 
hide by his workmen. A prominent Boston gentleman graced our 
company with his enthusiasm for science, — one of the modern regi- 
ment of Solomons, knowing every shrub and weed, from the cedar to 
the hyssop that springe th by the wall ; a man who would count it all 
joy to sleep in a ravine, and have his aristocratic frame battered and 
torn by rocks and trees, and his blood half sucked away by black 
flies, if he could find a wild flower that had never yet been christened 
with savage Greek or Latin at the altar of science. But our leader, 
Mr. M., seemed most thoroughly possessed with the poetry of the 
excursion. He climbed the steep wood-paths, declaiming in glorious 
style the most stirring mountain verses from Scott's ' Bokeby.' A 
cataract waked up his early reading of 4 Manfred,' and brought down 
an avalanche of its splendid rhythm upon our astonished and delighted 
ears. The sudden sight of the dome of Mount Washington, over the 
'edge of the ravine, called out, as a jubilant apotheosis, — 

Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains; 

They crown'd him long ago 
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, 

With a diadem of snow. 

Around his waist are forests braced; 
The avalanche in his hand; 



346 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



But ere it fall, that thundering ball 
Must wait for my command. 

" Poetry poured down from the distances of his boyhood read- 
ing like the singing rills around us from the mountain top. You 
remember, friend Transcript, that a judge in Georgia recently, when 
there was no Bible in the court, said, ' Swear the witness on Father 
Shehane's head, for he's a walking edition of Scripture.' So our 
friend Mr. M. is a portly Cyclopaedia of the choicest mountain poetry, 
— a volume that articulates its treasures with sonorous voice and 
manly emphasis. 

" Thus we made the time fly in crossing the two and a half miles 
of forest that lie between the carriage-road and 4 Hermit Lake.' This 
little sheet of water, so snugly embowered in the wilderness, would 
attract more attention were it not for the frowning wall of the ravine 
that looms over it, and draws the eye upward. It lies under the 
southeast ridge. Emerging from the woods now, .we see that the 
ravine is of horse-shoe shape, — the opposite outer cliff more than a 
thousand feet in height, the bottom sloping upwards towards the back- 
ward crescent wall, and the rim quite level. We climbed along the 
centre of the gulf, by the bed of a stream, pausing every minute to 
gaze at the grim ramparts on either hand, and to invent some new ex- 
clamation of amazement and awe. A path has been hewn out since 
among the scrubby bushes, so that explorers need not go over boots 
in water, as we did sometimes. Facing us, as we climbed, was the 
grand curve of the precipice, symmetrical seemingly as that of the 
Colosseum. It so fascinated me and made me eager to get nearer, 
that 1 utterly forgot the snow-arch. The face of the wall was wet 
with weak streams, that flash brilliantly in the sun. It bears the title, 
we believe, of < The Fall of a thousand Streams.' If Mr. M. had 
been as well acquainted with Wordsworth as with Byron and Scott, 
he would surely have quoted here the strangely applicable passage 
from 6 The Excursion,' — 

for now we stood 
Shut out from prospect of the open vale, 
And saw the water, that composed this rill, 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



Descending, disembodied, and diffused 
O'er the smooth surface of an ample crag, 
Lofty and steep, and naked as a tower. 
All further progress here was barred; 

high or low appeared no trace 

Of motion, save the water that descended, 
Diffused adown that barrier of steep rock, 
And softly creeping, like a breath of air, 
Such as is sometimes seen, and hardly seen, 
To brush the still breast of a crystal lake. 

' Behold a cabinet for sages built, 
Which kings might envy ! ' — Praise to this effect 
Broke from the happy old man's reverend lip; 
Who to the Solitary turned, and said, 
' In sooth, with love's familiar privilege, 
You have decried the wealth which is your own. 
Among these rocks and stones, methinks, I see 
More than the heedless impress that belongs 
To lonely Nature's casual work: they bear 
A semblance strange of power intelligent, 
And of design not wholly thrown away. 
Boldest of plants that ever faced the wind, 
How gracefully that slender shrub looks forth 
From its fantastic birthplace ! And I own, 
Some shadowy intimations haunt me here, 
That in these shows a chronicle survives 
Of purposes akin to those of man, 
But wrought with mightier arm than now prevails. 
—Voiceless the stream descends into the gulf 
With timid lapse;— and lo! while in this strait 
I stand — the chasm of sky above my head 
Is heaven's profoundest azure; no domain 
For fickle, short-lived clouds to occupy, 
Or to pass through; but rather an abyss 
In which the everlasting stars abide; 
And whose soft gloom, and boundless depth, might tempt 
The curious eye to look for them by day. 
— Hail Contemplation! from the stately towers, 
Beared by the industrious hand of human art 
To lift thee high above the misty air 
And turbulence of murmuring cities vast; 
From academic groves, that have for thee 
Been planted, hither come and find a lodge 
To which thou mayst resort for holier peace, — 
From whose calm centre thou, through height or depth, 
Mayst penetrate, wherever truth shall lead; 
Measuring through all degrees, until the scale 
Of time and conscious nature disappear, 
Lost in unsearchable eternity ! ' 



348 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



As we were approaching the base of this wall, I heard an exclamation 
that there was snow, and looking up, saw, a little way above and 
ahead, a patch of dirty white, which seemed ,to be about ten feet long. 
I turned again to the amphitheatre and continued climbing. Shortly 
the snow patch caught my eye again ; it had increased vastly in size 
and depth ; — a little nearer, and it seemed to open ponderous jaws ; 
a few feet more of climbing, and we stood at the mouth of an arching 
snow-cave, through which a stream was flowing lazily, increased by 
the water that dropped from the white and fretted roof. 

" How can I hope to describe to you the rich surprise of entering 
this cold, crystal cabin, fashioned by a mountain stream out of the 
huge, shapeless quarry that is deposited and hardened there by the 
winter storms ? The snow sweeps into the ravine to the depth, no 
doubt, of a hundred feet or more ; and this bank is the last shred of 
the frost-mantle which the sun and fogs tear from the surface of the 
White Hills. If the cascade did not help them by its taste for archi- 
tectural sapping and groining, they would be unable to dislodge the 
winter wholly from that gulf. It was some minutes before we got 
courage to go far into the cave. We had fears for the stability of 
the roof. But when we found that it was so hard as to require a 
hatchet to cut it, we felt reassured, trusted the span which the ice- 
gnome had heaved, and began to explore the cavern. It was so high 
that a tall man could not touch the ceiling with a five-foot staff. So 
many persons had laughed at Mr. M. for his accounts of the snow- 
arch and its size, a year ago, that we measured it with a line. It 
was 294 feet long, 66 feet broad, and about 15 feet deep where 
the snow was heaviest. The cave extended the whole breadth, and 
about half the length of the bank ; its roof being on an average about 
five or six feet thick, and very solid. 

" But the most charming feature of the interior was a second and 
smaller arch, at right angles with the more spacious one, just about 
large enough for a man to pass through, at which a more diminutive 
stream had tried its skill. It was of exquisite gothic workmanship. 
The rill was responsible for the curve of the roof and the general pro- 
portions, while the meltings had caught the spirit of the work, and 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



349 



laid in the finish of groovings and chasings by way of delicate orna- 
ment. Nature had put her rival ministers of grandeur and grace at 
work in the two streams that channelled this snow-heap with patient 
and merry chisels, — one leaving, as the witness of its fidelity, the 
sombre and masculine proportions of the cave, the other flowing under 
the cheerful feminine beauty of the ceiling it had wrought. Ah, the 
romantic economy, too, of that ceaseless mining and sculpture ! 
Where shall we find the rubbish and the chips ? All the waste turns 
to leaping and fleecy beauty, far below, on the mossy stairs of the 
Crystal Cascade. It feeds the roots of wild flowers ; it bears down 
nutriment to dainty and scarlet-freckled trout ; it carries coolness to 
human lips and melody to careworn hearts ;— all this before it pours 
into the Ellis stream, and plunges over the Glen Ellis cataract, and 
again over the Jackson falls, on its way to the Saco, that it may do 
wider service in that tide, before it dies into the sea. 

" The spot furnished an entirely new experience of the White 
Mountains. I had not expected to be thrilled with such surprise, so 
near the summit of Mount Washington, which I had visited so often. 
The stupendous amphitheatre of stone would of itself repay and over- 
pay the labor of the climb. It is fitly called the 6 Mountain Colos- 
seum.' No other word expresses it, and that comes spontaneously to 
the hps. The eye needs some hours of gazing and comparative meas- 
urement to fit itself for an appreciation of its scale and sublimity. 
One can hardly believe, while standing there, that the sheer concave 
sweep of the back wall of the ravine was the work of an earthquake 
throe. It seems as though Titanic geometry and trowels must have 
come in to perfect a primitive volcanic sketch. One might easily 
fancy it the Stonehenge of a Preadamite race, — the unroofed ruins 
of a temple reared by ancient Anaks long before the birth of man, for 
which the dome of Mount Washington was piled as the western 
tower. There have been landslides and rock-avalanches as terrible 
in that ravine as at Dixville Notch, — the teeth of the frosts have been 
as pitiless, the desolation of the cliffs is as complete, but the spirit of 
the place is not so gloomy as at Dixville, — is sublime rather than 

47 



* 



350 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



awful or dispiriting. At Dixville, all is decay, wreck ; the hopeless 
submission of matter in the coil of its hungry foes. In Tuckerman's 
Ravine there is a grand battle of granite against storm and frost, a 
Roman resistance, as though it could hold out for ages yet before 
the siege of winter, and all the batteries of the air. 

" But I must close. Of course we dined under the snow-arch. 
Between the pie and cheese there were eloquent parentheses of admi- 
ration for the crystal cave, and wonder at the proportions of the 
Colosseum. We pledged our host, Mr. M., and drank to the success 
of his road. Never was hospitality acknowledged in a more glorious 
hall, and the pledge was drunk in pure ice-water fresh from Feb- 
ruary There is no time to tell you of our climbing the cliffs of the 
ravine to the summit of Mount Washington. Just before we began 
to ascend by the sheer and treacherous-looking wall, Mr. M. gave us 
a noble recitation of the following passage from Scott's 4 Rokeby,' and 
one of our party came near verifying the experience which Bertram 
would have had if his final leap had not proved successful : — 

As bursts the levin in its wrath, 

He shot him down the sounding path; 

Kock, wood, and stream rung wildly out, 

To his loud step and savage shout. 

Seems that the object of his race 

Hath scaled the cliffs; his frantic chase 

Sidelong he turns, and now 'tis bent 

Right up the rock's tall battlement: 

Straining each sinew to ascend, 

Foot, hand, and knee their aid must lend 

Wilfrid, all dizzy with dismay, 

Views, from beneath, his dreadful way: 

Now to the oak's warp'd roots he clings, 

Now trusts his weight to ivy strings; 

Now, like the wild goat, must he dare 

An unsupported leap in air; 

Hid in the shrubby rain-course now, 

You mark him by the crashing bough, 

And by his corselet's sullen clank, 

And by the stones spurned from the bank 

And by the hawk scared from her nest, 

And ravens croaking o'er their guest, 

Who deem his forfeit limbs shall pay 

The tribute of his bold essay. 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



351 



See, he emerges ! — desperate now 

All further course — Yon beetling brow 

In craggy nakedness sublime / 

What heart or foot shall dare to climb? 

It bears no tendril for his clasp, 

Presents no angle to his grasp: 

Sole stay his foot may rest upon, 

Is yon earth-bedded jetting stone. 

Balanced on such precarious prop, 

He strains his grasp to reach the top. 

Just as the dangerous stretch he makes, 

By heaven, his faithless footstool shakes! 

Beneath his tottering bulk it bends, 

It sways, — it loosens. — it descends! 

And downward holds its headlong way, 

Crashing o'er rock and copsewood spray 

Loud thunders shake the echoing dell!— 

Fell it alone?— alone it fell. 

Just on the very verge of fate, 

The hardy Bertram's falling weight 

He trusted to his sinewy hands, 

And on the top unharmed he stands! 

I reached the Glen House before nine, and Gorham about ten. that 
evening, with a strong desire to repeat the visit, and with the convic- 
tion that every lover of impressive scenery will find Tuckerman's 
Ravine a spot that will repay trebly the toils of a day's excursion." 

Not less than five thousand persons make the ascent of Mount 
Washington, every summer, by the regular bridle-paths. There is 
year by year now, however, an increasing proportion of visitors who 
desire more loneliness and wildness in the track, and more adventure 
in the experience, than the commonly travelled routes to the summit 
will supply. For all such the northerly side of the ridge, as the 
noble scenery around its base becomes better known, will prove very 
attractive. The writer first became acquainted with the pictures 
which the northerly portion of the ridge reveals, in an excursion over 
Mount Adams, which was thus reported in the Boston Transcript : — 

" If any of your readers have ever driven from Gorham to Jeffer- 
son, on what is called the 4 Cherry Mountain road to the Notch,' they 



352 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



have noticed the ravine of Mount Adams, which is cut to the very 
heart, and up to the throat of the noble mountain. Seen from the 
road below, it is the most spacious and the grandest of all the gorges 
that have been cloven out of the White Hills. It is of an excursion 
up the tilted floor of this granite gulf that I sit down to write you 
now. How often, in riding along the road in Randolph, where its 
lines of lifted forest subside into the verdure of the valley, have I 
looked with longing up to its sheer and sharp-edged walls, — and far- 
ther up to its smooth-faced ledges blazing like mirrors with sunshine 
upon their moisture, — up to cascades that shook feathery silver over 
dwindled precipices, — up to the curving rampart that unites the two 
sides of the chasm, and supports the mountain's rocky spire ! There, 
I have said to myself, the very spirit of the hills is concentrated. 
There the wildness, freshness, and majesty which ' carriage-roads ' 
and hurrying feet and 6 Tip-Top Houses ' are driving or disenchant- 
ing from Mount Washington, are as undisturbed as when the Indians 
warned the daring pioneers of civilization from ascending Agiochook, 
on peril of the Great Spirit's wrath. 

Mark how the climbing Oreads 
Beckon thee to their arcades. 

" Yet the ravine was generally believed to be unscalable. No 
guide or hunter could tell what attractions it concealed, or the proba- 
ble character of the ground. No party, so far as we could learn, 
had ever been through it. But Mr. Gordon, who is as much at home 
in the woods as a bear, and who gets along without a compass in 
their thickets, by having the instinct of a bee, was ready and anxious 
to take charge of any person or company that would try to explore 
and scale it. So I endeavored to muster a small band for the 
attempt under his lead, knowing that we should all be safe in his 
charge and under his counsel. He is acquainted with the wilderness 
of the White Mountains as David knew the forests of Ziph, or Solo- 
mon the botany of Palestine. Last year, however, I was not suc- 
cessful in my efforts to collect recruits. But this month I found 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



353 



enough to justify the trial. A lawyer of Boston, who proved himself 
a thoroughly furnished wood-man, a clergyman, an artist, and your 
correspondent, were the quartette of novices, and with our admirable 
guide formed a harmonious, and as it turned out, a competent ' quin- 
tette club ' for the excursion. 

" Tuesday, the eleventh, in the afternoon, was the time for start- 
ing. It had rained in the morning. The clouds were heavy and 
dark after dinner, and blanketed the mountains. But the wind was 





favorable, and, according to Mr. Gordon's barometrical instinct, the 
signs were auspicious for the succeeding day. Some friends were 
kind enough to escort us from the Alpine House to the base of 
Adams, two miles beyond the farther side of Randolph Hill, where 
we were to strike into the forest. Just as we arrived opposite Madi- 
son, the cloak and cap of mist were thrown off, and the symmetrical 
mountain saluted us in an aristocratic suit of blue-black velvet. And 
as we reached the point where we were to leave the wagon, the fog 
lifted from the ravine also. Both its sides, its upper plateau, and its 



354 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



far-retreating wall looked full upon us in shadow so gloomy, as if the old 
mountain was making one last and crowning effort to frighten us from 
our enterprise, and save his savage chasm from desecration by human 
feet. The prospect was not very enticing, especially as the rain 
began to fall again when the horses stopped. But we put faith in 
the northwest wind for the weather of the morrow, bade good-bye to 
our friends in the wagon, and at four o'clock started on the ascent, 
along a brook that flows out of the ravine, and is one of the feeders 
of Moose River, which swells the Androscoggin. 

" We had supposed that this brook would furnish delight enough 
to relieve the fatigue of the first part of the ascent, and we were not 
disappointed. 

Gayest pictures rose to win me, 
Leopard-colored rills. 

What can be more charming and refreshing than the exploration of 
a mountain stream ? One minute your feet are in the deep, soft 
mosses — springy ottomans for the naiads — that cushion the fallen 
trunks along the banks. Next, you are pushing through the luxu- 
riant growths of fern, and bush, and vine, that choke the way be- 
tween the bordering birches and pines. Soon you are stopping to 
gaze at the rich weather-stains on the occasional smooth walls of 
stone ; or you pause before some scooped basin, a rod broad and five 
feet deep, in which the crystal water is stored to show off the dolphin 
hues of stones on the bottom, that have been polished by their toil of 
centuries at wearing out the immense granite bowl. And then the 
infinite caprice, and sport, and joy of the stream itself in its leaps all 
along the pathway from its far-up cradle, and its growth from a baby 
rill to a boyish brook ! Now it pours in a thin sheet of liquid glass 
over a broad and even rock. Now it slides in a tiny cataract along 
a slanting sluice-way. Now it streams in scattered fringes of pearly 
raggedness down a slope of rock that is striped with emerald moss. 
Now it strands all its silvery threads into a runnel, and pours with 
concentrated voice through the groove • of a sharp-edged shelf, into a 
still pool below. 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



355 



" But what folly to attempt to draw in words the curves and colors, 
the coyness and the hoyden frolic, the flashes and the moodiness, the 
laughter and the plaints of these daughters of the clouds ! What 




can make the time pass quicker, or the fatigue of climbing seem so 
slight, as the Protean beauty and ever-changing music of a mountain 
rill, which nature keeps sacred to poetry before it mingles with the 



356 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



more vulgar water of the valley, to begin a life of use ? Three hours 
slipped away quickly, while we were mounting the stony stairs of this 
un visited rivulet that drains the sides of the ravine, — although we 
had stumbled, and tested the coldness of its tide in other ways than 
by drinking, and, for a great portion of the way, carried our boots 
full of its liquid ice. 

" It was just sunset when we reached the proper point to pitch our 
camp for the night. The easterly cliff of the gorge, dimly seen 
through the trees, glowed with vivid gold — the promise of a bright 
day to succeed — as we stretched ourselves under the slanted birch- 
bark canopy, supported on four poles, that was to guard us from 
dews and rains. We could not but look with admiration at the quiet 
and business-like air and movements of Mr. Gordon, as he went to 
work with his axe upon a great tree, felled it, chopped the trunk into 
two huge logs, stretched them out before our rude tent, and kindled 
between them a noble fire. It was my first experience of ' camping 
out.' I hope it will not be the last. 

" It was pleasant to think, as we were drying our feet at that 
cheerful blaze, whose heat drove the mosquitos also from our wig- 
wam, that it was the first time a fire had been lighted — except, pos- 
sibly, by a thunderbolt — under those solemn precipices ; the first time 
that the hiss and crackle of the logs had ever chimed in there with 
the buzz of human voices, and the purr of the busy brook ; the first 
time that the gray cliffs had ever been looked up to, through flicker 
and smoke, from a tent at twilight ; or that sparks had been scattered 
aloft among the thick leaves, to mock for a moment the perennial 
sparkles from the camp-fires of the night. We were at liberty to 
enjoy the sensations of pioneers in the gorge, searching for a new 
path to the summit of Mount Washington. 

" How refreshing was the kettle of tea which was steeped and 
4 drawn ' for us by that beneficent blaze ! Was it because it was 
made of water tapped in its granite service-pipe, half-way between 
the clouds and the lower earth, that it yielded a flavor more exquisite 
than the cream of the Alpine House had ever imparted before ? Some 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



357 



six or eight dippers of it stimulated the memory of the lawyer of our 
group so that he gave us the most reviving stories, until we begged 
to be allowed to sleep. My little girl, five years old, was sadly dis- 
turbed, when I started, by the fear that bears would devour me. 
Indeed, while I was absent she became so anxious that a benevolent 
lady in the Alpine House comforted her with the assurance that ' all 
the bears in the Adams Ravine had mittens on their teeth.' They 
must also have had velvet on their paws, and cotton in their throats ; 
for we heard no motion or sound of any wild creature through the 
night-watch. The 1 Great Bear ' alone, prowling all night ' around 
the fold of the North Star,' looked down upon our slumber. Twice I 
awaked, and saw the tall and faithful Gordon moving stealthily to 
replenish the fire, and heard the tired monotone of the brook, mur- 
muring at its perpetual toil. But how well we rested, on our bed of 
spruce boughs, in the ' Gordon Hotel ; ' and how we needed all the 
strength which the night could inspire for the next day's task ; and 
how we were rewarded for all our fatigue, let me try to tell you in 
another letter." 

" Shall we continue our conversation with your readers, Mr. Edi- 
tor, about the excursion through the ravine of Adams to Mount 
Washington ? When I parted from you, our party were just going 
to sleep on our spruce couches, under our birch roof, with our feet to 
the fire, while the drowsy serenade of the brook served as a soporific 
to counteract the stimulus of Gordon's tea. 

" After early ablutions in the stream, and a breakfast which a 
camp-appetite made sumptuous, we started for the day's toil. Our 
first excitement was kindled by the gorgeousness of the morning sun- 
fight on the sheer gray rocks of the curving wall of the ravine, far 
up under the pinnacle of the mountain. The glowing gold which the 
wet mosses intermixed with the russet and purple of the precipice, 
very nearly took the soul of our artist companion out of his body. 
(If it had succeeded in severing the balloon from its bodily basket, 
Gorham would have been robbed of the poet for whom it has been 

48 



358 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



long waiting ; Boston would have lost a man of genius ; and the 
region of unembodied and ideal beauty would have gained a true seer 
before the time.) He insisted that, after such an 4 effect,' we must 
of necessity go on a descending grade of scenery the rest of the day. 

" An hour's easy climbing took us to a point, above the high trees 
and seemingly about midway in the gorge, from which perhaps the 
most impressive view of the ravine is gained. Looking off and down, 
its sides sloped sharply to the very road in the village of Randolph. 
Looking back and up, its wings, fifteen hundred feet over our heads, 
and in places nearly perpendicular, bent and joined in a wall of bare, 
jagged, and threatening ledge, just under the head of the mountain, 
which it completely shut out from view. We were in the region of 
silence. There was no scream, or song, or chipper of any bird, — no 
buzz of any insect. We were shielded by the right-hand wall from 
the westerly breeze which was driving the scud over the line of the 
mountain peaks ; and there were no leaves around us to stir and rus- 
tle at the fanning of the air. The brook had dwindled. We no 
longer had its path to follow. Now and then, under the large rocks, 
we could just hear a slight gurgle, where out of sight it was giving 
in baby prattle an intimation of its existence. On the steep cliffs, we 
could see, here and there, the motionless glass of a cascade, but it 
gave no sound. The only note of animal life we heard, all day, was 
the sharp chirrup of the chipmunk, not long after we left the camp. 
Our talk was, no doubt, the first sound of human voices that had ever 
broken that solemn stillness. The ravine lacks the great attraction 
of a 4 snow-arch,' and does not show so symmetrical a wall as the 
majestic Colosseum-curve, out of which, in Tuckerman's Ravine, the 
4 thousand streams ' seem to ooze. But it is grander than Tucker- 
man's in its cliffs ; and far more impressive, seen midway, for what 
one of our party called its 4 deep doivnityj — the sweep of its keen- 
edged walls from the very shoulders of the mountain to its feet by 
the Randolph road. 

44 From the point I have thus been speaking of, just above the line 
of high trees, it seemed as though we could reach the summit of the 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 359 



Wm 




ridge to two hours. But here we found the greatest difficulty of the 
whole excursion. The slope was not very steep ; for a mile or more, 
the bottom of the ravine was rather a gradually retreating stairway of 

enormous 
boulders ; 
and, as an 
Irishman 
remarked 
in ascend- 
ing the 
cone of 
M o u n t 
Washing- 
ton, 6 the 
dumpers 

WSBI^W^- 'lid their 

work very 
badly. 
The huge rocks were piled in 
the most eccentric confusion; 
crevasses, sometimes twenty 
and thirty feet deep and span- 
ned with moss, lay in wait for 
the feet ; thickets of scrub 
spruces and junipers overgrew 
these boulders, and made the 
most sinewy opposition to our 
passage. Every muscle of our 
bodies was called into play in 
fighting these dwarfed and 
knotty regiments of evergreens. 
A more thorough gymnasium for training and testing the working 
and enduring powers of the system, could not be arranged by art. 




After six hours of steady and 

48* 



hard climbing, — which, added to the 



360 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



three of the afternoon previous, made nine hours of toil -in scaling 
the ridge, — we gained the plateau above which the pinnacle of Ad 
ams soars. The last part of our path out lay up the eastern wall, 
just where it joins the left-hand cliffs ; and here we had the excite- 
ment of grand rock scenery overhanging and threatening us as we 
climbed ; while the opposite rampart, covered with green, and chan- 




nelled by streams into very graceful lines, responded to the blasted 
cliffs like Gerrzim to Ebal, — the hill of blessing to the mount of curs- 
ing. One could not turn the eye from side to side, without repeat- 
ing mentally the passage, ' strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.' 

" The last few rods of the passage out of the ravine led us up a nar- 
row and smooth gateway, quite steep, and carpeted with grass. We sat 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 361 

some time in it, looking at the rocky desolation and horror just about 
us, balanced by the lovely lines into which the verdure of the western 
ramparts was broken, — not knowing what a splendid view was in 
reserve for us when we should step out upon the ridge. The huge 
cone of Mount Madison rose before us, steep, symmetrical, and sharp, 
with more commanding beauty of form than any other summit of the 
White Hills has ever shown to my eye. We were facing the south- 
east when we rose out of the ravine, and were so nearly under the 
crest of Adams that its shape was hidden from us, and also every 
other summit of the range. So that there was nothing to compete 
with the proud proportions of the pinnacle before us. 

" There are very few peaked summits in the region of the White 
Hills. It is even said by accurate observers, that among the Alps 
there are not more than five that slope steeply on all sides from pointed 
tops. The sharpest apex is generally supported on one side by a long 
line with very moderate inclination. This is the case with the spires 
of Jefferson and Adams, seen from the upper portion of the bridle- 
road on Mount Washington. Nature in the mountain-lines, as in her 
other departments, loves to hide her strength, refrains from startling 
emphasis, and veils the intensity of her forces from the senses by 
breadth and mass in the products, which appeal to thought and imagi- 
native insight for recognition. The sharp drawing of mountains with 
very narrow bases, which we often see in pictures, is due to the fact 
that the artist is incompetent to suggest great height by the moderate 
lines that inclose vast bulk, and it is weak as caricature is feeble 
in contrast with portraiture, or as declamation is weak compared with 
the eloquence of original and practical speech. But the cone of 
Madison, seen from the gateway of the ravine, is not only steep, 
regular, and pointed, but, all other mountains being shut out, it looks 
immensely massive. The whole mountain has seldom looked so high 
from below as this bare fraction of it did, which we were gazing at 
from an elevation of four thousand feet on its sides. And its color 
was even more fascinating than its form. It puzzled us to under- 
stand how the rounding lines of the summit, as seen from the road in 



362 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Randolph, could have been conjured into the lance-like sharpness 
here revealed to us. And how the light gray which it wears to a 
beholder in Jefferson, or the leathery brown it presents from the 
Glen, or the gray green which is its real tint when we go close to its 
rocks, could have transformed itself into the leaden lava hue in which 
it rose before us, was a stranger mystery. I feel sure that it was 
some trick of the light, like many of the sunset tints, and not the 



color which the cone steadily presents. The effect was the more 
grand because it seemed as though nothing but batteries could have 
produced it. The peak looked like some proud fortification that had 
been stormed at with leaden shot by a park of artillery for years. 
Our artist was grieved that we had not more time to allow him in 
sketching the view. 

" We all looked with longing eyes to the summit, which seemed to 
invite us to scale it ; but the sun was already past noon, and we must 
reach the house on Mount Washington by dark. So we resolved to 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



363 



make the ascent of Mount Adams, whose topmost rocks were still 
nearly a mile off from us. Between the spires of Adams and Madi- 
son on the ridge there is a pond of icj water, refreshing enough to 
weary climbers, and from this point another view peculiarly striking, 
and in itself worth the whole toil of the expedition, is gained. We 
are almost overhung by the lawless rocks of a subordinate peak of 
Mount Adams, which we called John Quincy Adams, and back of 
that was the profile line of the higher crest, bulging off and sweeping 
down into a ravine deep below the general level of the ridge. The 
rocks were very jagged, and at first sight nothing could seem more 
harsh and chaotic. Yet the view was strangely fascinating. I could 
not understand why the impression of beauty, even of unusual soft- 
ness and melody, should be made by such ragged desolation. And 
if I had never read the seventeenth chapter of Mr. Ruskin's fourth 
volume of Modern Painters, I might have been ignorant of the secret. 
We are told there that a line drawn over a great Alpine ridge, so as 
to touch the principal peaks that jut from it, will usually be found to 
be part of an unreturning or immortal curve. The grandeur of the 
Alpine pinnacles is bounded by that law of symmetry. And I soon 
saw that the precipices of Mount Adams were in subjection to the 
same line of grace. The jutting rocks and the seemingly lawless 
notchings, like the scalloping of a lovely leaf, hinted the sweep of an 
infinite curve. I had often found great pleasure in detecting the 
recurrence of a few favorite angles and forms in the chain-like lines 
of hills within ten miles of Mount Washington ; but the revelation of 
this curve by the sharp edges of the cliff of Adams was not the sim- 
ple perception of a pleasant fact, but the opening of my eyes to a 
new page in the meaning of Nature. As soon as I returned, I sought 
the volume I have mentioned, and I cannot refrain from quoting in 
this letter the passage on the 189th page, that now lies open be- 
fore me, and which I have read with new interest. 

" 6 A rose is rounded by its own soft ways of growth, a reed is 
bowed into tender curvature by the pressure of the breeze ; but we 
3ould not from these have proved any resolved preference, by Na- 



364 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



ture, of curved lines to others, inasmuch as it might always have 
been answered that the curves were produced, not for beauty's sake, 
but infallibly by the laws of vegetable existence ; and looking at 
broken flints or rugged banks afterwards, we might have thought that 
we only liked the curved lines because associated with life and organ- 
ism, and disliked the angular ones because associated with inaction 
and disorder. But Nature gives us in these mountains a more clear 
demonstration of her will. She is here driven to make fracture the 
law of being. She cannot tuft the rock-edges with moss, or round 
them by water, or hide them with leaves and roots. She is bound to 
produce a form, admirable to human beings, by continual breaking 
away of substance. And behold, so soon as she is compelled to do 
this, she changes the laws of fracture itself. " Growth," she seems to 
say, " is not essential to my work, nor concealment, nor softness ; but 
curvature is : and if I must produce my forms by breaking them, the 
fracture itself shall be in curves. If, instead of dew and sunshine, 
the only instruments I am to use are the lightning and the frost, then 
their forked tongues and crystal w r edges shall still work out my laws 
of tender line. Devastation instead of nurture may be the task of 
all my elements, and age after age may only prolong the unrenovated 
ruin ; but the appointments of typical beauty which have been made 
over all creatures shall not therefore be abandoned; and the rocks 
shall be ruled, in their perpetual perishing, by the same ordinances 
that direct the bending of the reed and the blush of the rose." ' 

" From the top of this pyramid of Adams, whose rocks are so huge 
and lawless that it would be scarcely possible to make a horse-path 
to it from the plateau, w T e gained glorious views of the northern coun- 
try, — the beautiful Kilkenny range, the lovely farms and uplands of 
Randolph and Jefferson, the long unrolled purple of the Androscog- 
gin, making a right angle at the Lary Farm, the Pond of Safety, on 
the northerly side of the Pilot Hills, and Umbagog, Richardson's 
Lake, and Moosetockmaguntic, whose dreamy waters, framed by the 
unbroken wilderness, are stocked with portly trout, and haunted by 
droves of moose. 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 365 



" The long tramp which follows next, around the bending ridge 
between Jefferson and Adams, is rewarded by the glorious picture of 
Washington, superior to any other which the range affords. The 
long easterly slope is shown from its base in the Pinkham forests ; 




the cone towers sheer out of the Gulf of Mexico, and every rod of 
the bridle-path is visible, from the Ledge to the Summit House. 
From the peak of Adams one can see as much as from the top of 
Washington, except the small segment of the circle which the dome 

49 



366 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



of Washington itself conceals. But this loss is far more than made 
up by having Mount Washington thus in the picture. Gra inin g the 
crest of the stout and square-shouldered Jefferson, our route ran next 
over the dromedary humps of Mount Clay, and up the long and 
tedious slope of Mount Washington to the Tip-Top House. We 
reached it at seven o'clock, pretty thoroughly tired, but not so ex- 
hausted that we could not enjoy the marvellous water-views which 
the setting sun kindled for us on the southeast, — Lovell's Pond, Se- 
bago Lake, Ossipee, Winnipiseogee, and beyond them the silver sea 
plainly cut by the line of the Maine shore, — the first time I had ever 
clearly seen it from the summit. It was something to be truly grate- 
ful that we had been able to fulfil our plan in the excursion without 
an accident, and without delay from unpleasant weather. The day 
had been perfect. The mists of the morning had lifted from the 
peaks when we gained the ridge, and there had been clouds enough 
to shed sufficient shadows to give variety of expression to the splen- 
did scenes with which we had made acquaintance. 

"As to our satisfaction with the excursion, costing as it did no 
little toil, let me say that there is no approach to Mount Washington, 
and no series of mountain views, comparable with this ascent and its 
surroundings on the northerly side. Your path lies among and over 
the largest summits of the range. Between Madison and Adams you 
have the noblest outlines of rocky crest which the whole region can 
furnish. Mount Jefferson glories in the afternoon light with the most 
fascinating contrast of purple and orange hues. Mount Washington 
shows himself in impressive and satisfactory supremacy. You wind 
around the edges of every ravine that gapes around the highest sum- 
mits. You see the long and narrow gully between Madison and 
Adams ; the tremendous hollow of Adams itself which we climbed ; 
the precipitous gulf between Jefferson and Adams on the southeast ; 
the deep cut gorge hi Jefferson on the northwest, whose westerly 
bones of gray cliffs, (see sketch in the next chapter,) breaking bare 
through the steep verdure, are perhaps the most picturesque of all the 
rock-views we beheld ; the chasm between Jefferson and Clay, divided 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



367 



from the savage Gulf of Mexico by a spur of Jefferson that runs out 
towards the Glen House ; and the long rolling braces that prop 1 
Mount Pleasant, and Franklin, and the tawnj Munroe, — the bounda- 
ries of the ravines that you look into in riding to Mount Washington 
over the Crawford path. 

" The only trouble with the route is, that there is too much to see 
in one day. It would be better to camp, if possible, near the summit 
of Mount Adams, and thus spread the delight more equally and pro- 
fitably over two days, and have a sunset and sunrise also from the 
ridge to remember. This last was denied to us. We slept soundly 
in the Summit House, and waked the next morning to find ourselves 
wrapped in cloud and rain. But in spite of our tramp the day be- 
fore, we walked from the top to the Alpine House in Gorham, through 
showers and mud, a distance of fifteen miles, in less than five hours. 

" P. S. — Since the excursion thus hastily described, I have been 
twice over the best portion of our route. Once a small party of us 
climbed the northerly slope of Mount Madison through the 6 Gordon 
path,' which our excellent guide ' blazed ' for us with a hatchet. 
Four hours' climbing carried us to the summit. We went nearly 
over to Mount Jefferson, and returned to Gorham by the same track, 
down Mount Madison, — making the whole journey in fourteen hours 
from the Alpine House. The second time, we rode to the Glen ; 
took horses to the base of the cone of Mount Washington ; went 
around, in the upper portion of the Gulf of Mexico, to Mount Clay ; 
thence to Jefferson, where we dined ; thence around the edge of the 
Adams ravine ; up the cone of Madison, and down the Gordon path 
to the foot of Randolph Hill. This excursion required fifteen hours 
from the Alpine House. To all lovers of the most exciting and noble 
scenery which the White Mountains furnish, I commend this northerly 
route to the summit of Mount Washington, with Mr. Gordon — who 
may always be found by inquiry at the Alpine House — for guide." 

Thus ends the original account of our expeditions through the un- 
broken forests to the northerly portion of the White Mountain ridge. 

49* 



368 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



We have repeated the excursion many times since the letters were 
written, — preferring now to take the path up Mount Madison from 
the foot of Randolph Hill, — and always with increased interest in the 
scenery, and firmer conviction that the toil is better repaid than by 
any other tramp in the neighborhood of Mount Washington. And 
here we must close our description of the scenery and emotions 
gained by climbing so far above the level of New England. The 
best way for travellers, who wish by the bridle-paths to s<5e the most 
of the range to which a day can introduce them, is to ascend from 
the Crawford House, and go down facing the noble towers of Jeffer- 
son, Adams, and Madison, on the Glen path. If one is going up 
and down the same path, the Glen road, we think, is preferable. If 
one is to cross the ridge, the scenery will be far more impressive to 
ascend from the Notch, and descend to the Glen, than to reverse 
the process. But we will go counter to our own advice, and de- 
scend to the plains from the summit of New Hampshire by the 
Crawford path, for the sake of this passage by Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher, that might otherwise be lost to us. 

" The descent from the top of Mount Washington, towards the 
Gibbs House, had in it one half hour of extreme pleasure, and two 
hours of common pleasure. After leaving the summit hill I shot 
ahead of the fifteen or twenty in the party, and rode alone along the 
ridge that separates the eastern and western valleys. Beginning at 
your very feet as little crevices or petty gorges, the valleys widened, 
and deepened, and stretched forth, until on either side they grew dim 
in the distance, and the eye disputed with itself whether it was lake 
or cloud that spotted the horizon with silver. The valleys articulate 
with this ridge as ribs with a backbone. As I rode along this jag- 
ged and broken path, except of my horse's feet, there was not a sin- 
gle sound. There was no wind. There was nothing for it to sing 
through if there had been ever so much. There were no birds. 
There were no chirping insects. I saw no insects except spiders, 
which here, as everywhere, seemed well fed, and carried plump bel- 
lies. There was perfect peace, perfect stillness, universal brightness, 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON. 



369 



tlie fulness of vision, and a wondrous glory in the heaven, and over 
all the earth. The earth was to me as if it were unpeopled. I saw / 
neither towns nor cities, neither houses nor villages, neither smoke, 
nor motion, nor sign of life. I stopped, and imagined that I was as 
they were who first explored this ridgy wilderness, and knew that, as 
far as eye could reach, not a white man lived. And yet these 
thoughts were soon chased away with the certainty that under that 
silvery haze were thousands of toiling men, romping children, mothers 
and maidens, and the world was going on below just as usual. How 
are the birds to be envied who make airy mountains by their wings ! 
Could I rise six thousand feet above the ground, that were substan- 
tially to be on the mountain top. Then, when the multitude wearied 
us, and the soul would bathe in silence, we would with a few beats 
lift up through the air, and seek the solitude of space, and hide in 
the clefts of clouds, or ride unexplored ranges of crystal white cloud- 
mountains, that scorn footsteps, and on whose radiant surfaces an 
army of feet would wear no path, leave no mark, but fade out as do 
steps upon the water ! 

" And so, for a half hour, I rode alone, without the rustle of leaves, 
— without hum or buzz, — without that nameless mixture of pipes, 
small and great, that fill the woods, or sing along the surface of the 
plains. There were no nuts to fall, no branches to snap, no squirrel 
to bark, no birds to fly out and flap away through the leaves. The 
matted moss was born and bred in silence. The stunted savins and 
cedars crouched down close to the earth from savage winds, as par- 
tridges crouch when hawks are in the air. The forests in the chasms 
and valleys below were like bushes, or overgrown moss. If there 
was any wind down there, — if they shook their leaves to its piping, 
and danced when it bid them, it was all the same to me, — for motion 
or rest were alike at this distance. 

" There is above every man's head a height into which he may 
rise, and, whether care and trouble fret below or tear on, they be- 
come alike silent and powerless. It is only our affections that mount 
up, and dwell with us, where bickerings and burdens never come." 



/ 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



The mountains indeed, that they may show their dignity and communicate their Javors, re- 
quire to be approached with great painstaking and peculiar respect. But no oriental king ever 
held himself in greater seclusion, or ever vouchsafed more dim and inadequate notions of his 
personal glory, than do they to those remote from their dwelling. The difference for the be- 
holder of mountains, however, does not arise merely from the difficulty of receiving their forms 
without sight purely into the imagination, but also from the preparation of mind occasioned by 
the travellers own long and laborious search after their grandeur. He pays, in his own expo- 
sure and toil and patience, the price of admission to their incomparable theatre. He gains 
gradually the mood to appreciate and enjoy them ; and his mind expands to their breadth, and 
grows up to their exaltation. A man in his easy-chair, reading a book or looking at a print, 
can but partially conceive their character. He treads in the edge of their imaginary shadow, 
instead of scaling their real height. Yet is it well worth the while to catch even hints and 
refections of their wondrous substance which God made and upreared, to be seen and remem- 
bered and related among men. 

The plains, all save a few barren deserts of sand, have yielded to the possession of human 
art. The hills, as in the old Scriptures they are called, are, indeed, everlasting. When we 
have left them, they cannot be forgotten or removed from our thought. As we still feel in our 
nerves the motion of the sea after we have planted our feet on the firm land, so the crests and 
hollows of the solid globe continue to make themselves felt in our mind. Away vastly they stretch 
in their earthy storm, their fixed fluctuation, their surge of primeval rock into the skies. Once 
seen, ever after remaining a new and glorious furniture of the mind, in their immense spread 
on the floor of the world, wondrously somehow, with no loss of size, transferred to the chambers of 
the imagina tion, they stand there, a mute, material warning against all moral narrowness and big- 
otry. Liberty and law, magnanimity and humility, inflexible sincerity and inexhaustible bounty, 
are their lessons. Purity ever descending from the heavens, in their flowing robes or frozen 
garb, is their perpetual example and admonition. And he that climbeth up their side, reso- 
lutely keeping the rough and devious yet ascending way, his prospect widening with every step 
as he goes on, till at the natural column'' s head, held up so mightily and so high, he trembles as 
between two worlds, will be reminded of his immortality. 

Rev. C. A. Bartoi, 



/ 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 

Properly, according to the plan we have generally followed in 
the book, the views of the White Mountain range from Bethlehem, 
and along the course of the Ammonoosuc near the White Mountain 
House and the ruins of the old Fabyan Hotel, belong to this chapter. 
They he upon the slopes which the Connecticut drains. We wish, 
however, to call attention in this concluding chapter to a few promi- 
nent views of the Washington range from the Connecticut itself, and 
to show how the noblest of these pictures can be enjoyed in connec- 
tion with the usual White Mountain tour. 

There is a striking picture of the great chain from the village of 
Littleton, and all along the stage-route to Lancaster. Views not 
only of the grandest peaks, but also of the Franconia range, burst 
upon the traveller in connection with a breadth of open country, and 
rich rolls of cultivated upland that seem to be set there less for their 
bounty than their color, which may claim to be ranked among the 
rarest landscapes to which our volume has called attention. And 
they are a fitting introduction to the scenery around Lancaster. We 
have already said in the opening chapter, that if Lancaster had been 
made accessible, a few years ago, by the Grand Trunk Railway, it 
would have been the great rival of North Conway. With the attrac- 
tive accommodation it now offers in its elegant and spacious Hotel, it 
will be sure to draw a large and increasing number of guests, every 
year, to submit themselves to the charm of the soothing hills that 
immediately encircle it ; to enjoy the drives along the banks of the 
curving Connecticut ; and, from the luxury of color and shadow spread 
wide over its intervale in a soft afternoon light, to mount upon the 
Lunenburg Hills, where the bright blue of the river and the embow 

50 



374 THE WHITE HILLS. 

ered homes of the village are set in the relief and under the protec- 
tion of the long White Mountain wall, tinged with the violet of de- 
parting day. 

There is no single meadow-view in Lancaster equal to the intervale 




of North Conwaj. But the river is incomparably superior to the 
Saco ; and in the combined charm, for walks or rides, of meadow and 
river — the charm not of wildness, such as the darker and more rapid 
Androscoggin gives, but a cheerful brightness and beneficence — Lan- 
caster is unrivalled. 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



375 



And. when the distant mountain ranges 
In moonlight or blue mist are clad, 

Oft memory all the landscape changes, 
And pensive thoughts are blent with glad 

For then as in a dream Elysian, 
Val d'Arno's fair and loved domain 

Seems, to my rapt, yet waking vision, 
To yield familiar charms again! 

Save that for dome and turret hoary. 

Amid the central valley lies 
A white church-spire unknown to story, 

And smoke-wreathes from a cottage rise. 




Vet here may willing eyes discover 

The art and life of every shore, 
For Nature bids her patient lover 

All true similitudes explore. 

These firs, when cease their boughs to quiver, 
Stand like pagodas Brahmins seek, 

Yon isle, that parts the winding river, 
Seems moulded from a light caique. 



870 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



And ferns that in these groves are hidden, 

Are sculptured like a dainty frieze, 
While choral music steals unbidden, 

As undulates the forest breeze. 

A Gothic arch and springing column, 

A floral-dyed mosaic ground, 
A twilight shade and vista solemn, 

In all these sylvan haunts are found. 

Lancaster is well situated for the enjoyment of the winter effects 
upon the mountains. It was the writer's fortune once to pass a few 
days in the village and its neighborhood, early in March, when the 
hue of the White Mountains justified their name, and they stood up 
in the full splendor of their snowy regalia. 

It was in a week that opened a " sectional " view of winter, showing 
it enthroned on the hills in the gorgeous panoply of its despotism. 
The days ran over nearly the whole scale of the season's tempera- 
ture, swept the gamut of its music, and displayed the resources of 
its winter-palette on the landscape. We had warm weather and 
savage cold ; gray skies and cloudless blue ; the mountains were 
wrapped in frosty veils, and soon stood up chiselled sharp on the 
spotless sky ; still mornings dawned, when the smoke, — " the azure 
pillars of the hearth," — rose to the heights of the neighboring peaks 
without bending, and were swiftly succeeded by furious gusts ; golden 
evenings followed hard upon thick afternoons, and died into spark- 
ling nights, when the valleys were lustrous with " the spears of moon- 
freezing crystals." 

On the first day of our visit the weather was genial, and low clouds 
from the sea were scudding fast towards the mountains. But tow- 
ards night, Shawondasee and Wabun — as the south and the east 
winds have been christened for us in " Hiawatha " — raised a savage 
warwhoop all through the valley, and pelted the region with squalls 
of snow. On Tuesday " the fierce Kabibonokka " was on hand to 
drive them back. Down he came 

from his lodge of snow-drifts 
From nis nome among the icebergs 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



377 



And his hair, with snow besprinkled, 
Streamed behind him like a river, 
Like a black and wintry river, 
As he howled and hurried southward, 
Over frozen lakes and moorlands. 

Only we must make exception from the poet's description in the 
matter of the hair. It was not black, nor gloomy. The dishevelled 
clouds that rushed across the hills were smitten with fitful sunshine, 
and fluttered in golden threads as they scattered their sparkles south- 
ward. After the furious norther had blown the sky clear, it whirled 
the light snow in clouds, stopped railroad trains, and brought the 
temperature before night to ten below zero. What plumes it fastened 
upon the sharpest peaks ! It swept the snow over them as an off- 
shore breeze loosens the spray of breaking billows, tossed it in 
feathery spires to flash in the sunshine, and then would whirl a cloud 
of the dazzling dust around the necks of the mountains, till you felt 
that they must gasp from suffocation. The rarest poetry of the win- 
ter scenery was painted on the eye in these antics of the hurricanes. 

If one could enjoy the open air as freely, and find it as genial in 
the winter, as in the summer, we cannot doubt that the colors on the 
bleached landscapes would be found as inviting as those which blend 
into the summer pomp. The distant views of the great range in 
summer are certainly far inferior to those we enjoyed in the approach 
to them in March, when it swelled soft, vague, and golden, — a pigmy 
Monte Rosa, on the northwestern sky. Lafayette has never shown 
itself to such advantage in July as it did then from Lancaster at 
evening, when the blustering clouds parted to let its white wedge be 
visible, burnished to an amber blaze by the setting sun, and driven 
as one crystal into the chilly sky. And the Stratford peaks do not 
look so high and solemn in August, when the sun fevers their sheer 
precipices, as at such a time in their priestly drapery. On all the 
bald ridges and crests the silver splendor was relieved against the 
blue. This makes the richest charm of the Alps ; and one could then 
drive among the White Hills as through a mimic Switzerland. Yes, 
and the colors must have been essentially the same. For the artist 



378 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



that would paint the magnificence we saw on the Pilot Hills and the 
White Mountain range at sunset and sunrise from Lancaster, must 
dip his brush into as exquisite ambers, plum tints, gold, and purple, 
as he would need to interpret the baptism of the evening upon Mont 
Blanc, or the morning glow upon the Jungfrau. 

During the same visit we enjoyed a ride among the familiar hills 
of the Androscoggin Valley, and can recall the contrast to the gen- 




eral wiklness given by a drive from Gorham to the Glen. The high 
walls which guard that road from the northwesters had saved the 
snow from drifts. It lay for six miles perfectly even, to the depth 
of some six inches, without blemish ; and unbroken, except by a 
large sled-load of hay that had been driven over it, and which, over- 
hanging the runners, had left delicately pencilled lines all along the 
untrodden margins of the path. The green on Carter and Moriah, 
at the left, was turned into rusty bronze, and the snow which shone 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



379 



through the stripped trees around the roots of the forests made 
their sombre sides look as though they had been powdered with crys- 
tal dust. Every blackened stump along the roadside seemed an 
Ethiopian head crowned with a graceful and stainless turban. Each 
rock in the river-bed showed a fantastic nightcap. The springs were 
*' stagnant with wrinkling frost." And at every turn, old Washing- 
ton was bulging into the cold and brilliant blue with irregular white- 
ness ; or Madison, in more feminine symmetry, displayed a fresh view 
of sloping shoulders clasped to the waist in ermine. 

But the most impressive features of the scene were those which 
started out by moonlight. Then, with the thermometer at twelve 
below zero, and the wind cutting as you drove against it, as if deter- 
mined to bite into the brain, one might easily fancy himself in an 
arctic latitude. The full moon turned the great hills into ghastly 
domes and pyramids of chalk. The air seemed weird. There was 
no sound of brawling brooks, or running river, or chirping insect life, 
as in summer. The stars flashed without sympathy in the bleak sky. 
Going from such a ride to the volumes of the lamented and heroic 
Kane, we could understand better the pictures that line the memory 
of the survivors of that devoted band. Those stiff, white peaks tow- 
ered as gravestones over the creative forces that once filled the val- 
ley with joy, and painted it with verdure. 

But what, we thought, is so mystic as the processes of Providence 
most familiar to us ! Only a few weeks will pass before the frosty 
whiteness shall be chipped from those cliffs ; the crystal splinters 
that fly from the sunbeams' chisels will melt into music, and feed 
the mosses of the mountain-top, and sing in the rills that dance 
towards the sea ; and the stars will glow over the bursting promise 
of June. 

And now we must call attention to the route by which, in the early 
beauty of June, or in the full splendor of summer, the traveller may 
be introduced to the most impressive view of the White Mountain 
range which the slopes towards the Connecticut command. This is 



380 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



gained by passing from the Androscoggin Valley over towards the 
Connecticut by what is called 

THE CHERRY MOUNTAIN ROAD, 

from Gorham to the Notch. The distance is thirty-four miles. At 
Jefferson Hill, eighteen miles from Gorham, the distance is only seven 
miles to the Connecticut in Lancaster ; but the road here intersects, 
by a very acute angle, with a road across the Jefferson meadows, and 
over a low spur of Cherry Mountain to the Crawford House at the 
Notch, which is sixteen miles distant from Jefferson Hill. With the 
exception of about two miles on Cherry Mountain — and this portion 
only rough, but not in the least dangerous — the road is as good as 
any in the neighborhood of the White Hills. It can easily be trav- 
elled from Gorham in seven hours. 

We give these particulars because as yet there are no regular 
stages on the route. Parties are sent by private stage wagons from 
the Alpine House in Gorham. Comparatively few of the White 
Mountain tourists have become acquainted with the scenery, or even 
perhaps know of the route up to this time. But it is steadily 
securing a wider attention, and is destined before long, we think, 
to attract a large proportion of the travellers who now pass to 
or from the Notch and the Glen by the way of Jackson and Bart- 
lett, a distance of thirty-six miles to the Glen, and of forty-four to 
Gorham. 

The question of the comparative merits of the two routes, as to 
scenery, is often raised. On the regular stage-road from the Glen to 
the Notch, after leaving the Glen House, there is no full view of the 
great White Mountain range. There is a glimpse of Mount Wash- 
ington about three miles from the Glen, near the entrance to the 
Crystal Cascade, and a very noble view of it on looking back after 
passing Cook's, on the edge of Jackson. But after that, not only 
Washington, but the range, is hidden by lower hills during the whole 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



381 



distance. These hills are very lovely, and the drive is thoroughly 
delightful, but it does not make one acquainted, as the Cherry Moun- 
tain route does, with the whole of the Mount Washington range. 
And certainly if a person has once travelled the Jackson and Bart- 
lett road, he should by all means, on the second visit, try the north- 
erly circuit to the Notch through Jefferson. 




By this Cherry Mountain route, after the first mile from the Al- 
pine House in Gorham, we are in company with the White Mountains 
proper for twenty-five miles. We take them up into fellowship grad- 
ually. The range is in the shape of the body of a figure five, and 
we go around the bulge of it, formed by the curve in which the five 
largest mountains are set. First Madison and Adams come into 

51 



382 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



view, and we drive directly by their base and under their summits in 
passing over Randolph Hill. — This view we have already described 
in the chapter on the Androscoggin Valley. — Next, after passing the 
great ravine in Mount Adams, — of which we gave a drawing in the 
last chapter, — Mount Jefferson comes into view. Here the driver 
should rein up to allow something more than hasty glances at the 
three majestic forms that tower over the path, and especially to let 
passengers enjoy the castellated ridge of Mount Jefferson, whose 
rocks rising over a steep ravine seem to be the turrets of decaying 
fortifications. The artist's sketch of these romantic looking cliffs was 
taken, not from below, but from Mount Adams on the ridge, nearly 
four thousand feet above. 

Riding a little farther on, we see the summits of Pleasant, Frank- 
lin, and Monroe start out above the forests on the left. Next Mount 
Clay makes its appearance. And then, as we look back, the ascend- 
ing line of Washington shows itself last of all, though it is the centre 
of the range, leaving the wilderness behind it as it mounts to a 
rocky crest. The point we speak of now is Martin's in Jefferson, 
about thirteen miles from Gorham. Have you ever seen a snake, 
half startled and half playful, raise its supple neck and support its 
wary head for a moment by a curve that is the poetry of rest ? Then 
you know something of the vitality, blending pride and grace, of the 
line, seen from this point, on which the upper rocks of Mount Wash- 
ington are borne to their airy majesty. 

Goethe somewhere gives a picture in words of a typical Alpine 
landscape, — groups of deep shady trees of different species, standing 
out over a fresh green foreground which is fanned by soft airs that 
seem to put the lights in motion ; a middle ground of lively green 
tone growing fainter as it ascends ; wide pastures on the slopes of 
the higher districts, where dark solitary firs stand forth from the 
grassy carpet, and foaming brooks rush down from cliffs whose wind- 
ing steeps are climbed by laden mules ; and above, the topmost 
Alpine range, where neither tree nor shrub appears, but only amid 
the rocky teeth and snow summits a few sunny spots clothe them- 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



383 



selves with a soft sward on which the chamois feeds. Compared 
with such pictures the White Mountain scenery must seem monoto- 
nous. But there is no point in New Hampshire where its monotony 
is so poetic and sublime, where the wilderness, miles and miles in ex- 
tent, unenlivened by a clearing or the smoke of a cabin, unravagecl 
by the axe and unspotted by fire, flows off in such noble lines and 
folds from the shoulders of the bleak hills. The forms of the moun- 
tains are nobler on this side than on the side towards the old Fabyan 
place near the Notch. The largest members of the range are the 
most prominent here. The ridge is not so lank, and its braces run 
out with more vigor ; the ravines are more powerfully furrowed ; and 
Mount Washington is far better related to the chain. 

Then a most striking contrast to all the preceding scenery is 
opened when the height of land in Jefferson is gained, and we look 
off towards Lancaster. At first sight there is something grander than 
the range behind us in the long lines crowned with forest that sweep 
with even slope towards the Connecticut. And what breadth of 
prospect ! At the left, the Cherry Mountain heaving out of a vast 
plain attracts us ; then at the right, the Pliny ridge, on which, far up 
% towards the summit, the wilderness has been displaced by smiling 
farms ; the cultivated hills of Bethlehem glow like huge opals on the 
west ; and more northerly than these, and far beyond them, summits 
of the Vermont Mountains peer dim and blue. The view is as vast 
as from many a mountain- top. 

But it is from Goodell's, eighteen miles from G-orham, where the 
road turns towards the Notch, that the scenery on a clear day is 
grandest. Here Lafayette, with other Franconia mountains, comes 
into view. From no point is a better landscape-picture of him to be 
gained than he offers here with that long serrated summit, and the 
precipices of his sides reduced to dimples. And here, too, the color 
of the White Hills is richest in the late afternoon light. From this 
point for five miles over the Jefferson meadows, in travelling towards 
the Notch, we ride in full view of every summit of the chain, seeing 
W ashington in the centre dominant over all. 



384 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Such is a faint suggestion of the characteristic scenery by the 
Cherry Mountain road to the Crawford House. In some respects 
the return ride from the Notch to Gorham is more interesting, from 
the fact that from GoodelPs ^Ye drive towards the range, seeing it 
darken more and more as we approach its base ; but there are some 
advantages in the outward ride to offset this. There is as much 
beauty to be enjoyed on other routes ; but for grandeur, and for 




opportunities of studying the wildness and majesty of the sovereign 
range, the Cherry Mountain route is without a rival in New Hamp- 
shire. There is as yet no large public-house in Jefferson. If a 
good hotel should be erected there, the village would soon become 
one of the most popular resorts among the mountains, and the road 
we have been describing would need no further introduction of its 
advantages and claims. 

One of the most delightful acquaintances we have made with the 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



385 



scenery on the Cherry Mountain road, was after a long rain, in which 
we had been locked up in the Franconia Notch. 

" Wednesday noon, there is a patch of blue overhead, and the rain 
stops. Let us take wagon and be off. No sooner were we out of 
the Notch than the rain returned into it for two or three days further 
drenching. We escaped a wetting ; but not a peep of Lafayette 
would the black clouds permit. Does it not try the very springs of 
one's patience, to drive twice along the line of splendid scenery, 
which the breath of the west would open, and to see nothing but the 
proscenium curtain of ashy mist ? The whole sky was dark and wet. 
The world seemed ' covered with the deep as with a garment : the 
waters stood above the mountains.' But we soon found that there 
was compensation even for the angry sky and the absence of moun- 
tain views. I had never seen any mountain torrents in full power. 
Now, that chapter of hill-passion was to be opened. Lafayette was 
veiled, but he was eloquent. Every vein of the sloping fields was 
swollen with the recent bounty of the clouds, of which the ravines in 
the Franconia ridge were the almoners. Rills were promoted into 
brooks. Brooks were enlarged into streams. Little trout-streams 
were foaming rapids. The feeders of the large rivers of New Eng- 
land, that generally ripple along in the summer, in shrunken chan- 
nels, with drowsy murmur, were roaring and frightful floods. 

" Every note in the scale of fresh-water music was struck by the 
full baptism of those persistent clouds. You could hear the plash and 
babble of a new-born streamlet, — the first infant cooing of a river, — 
as it came soft over the bent grass ; the dash down a channelled 
bank of a rivulet ; the full-throated gurgle of a runnel through a 
rocky passage ; the singing of a rill that swept across a pasture and 
dived under the little corduroy bridges of the road ; the anxious bari- 
tone of a hurrying stream that seemed fearful it could not do all the 
business it had on hand for that day. The air was filled with the 
chorus of the rain. One would think that an hour or two of such 
rage would drain the hills of their legacy. Must not every rock of 
old Lafayette be pouring a tide which some magic rod has unsealed 



386 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



from them ? The great business of the hill-tops, during the drought, 
seemed to be to conjure the rain for the parching fields ; now, they 
had then- hands full to get rid of the superfluity. The cataracts and 
cascades are tasked to their utmost. Xo room for beauty now. 
Duty and use are the overseers of to-day. Next week, the feathery 
spray may break over the rocks, and the thin tides break themselves 
in silvery plaitings among the forest dells and chasms, over the mossy 
stones ; but now, all the scuppers of the mountains must spout to 
save the pastures and harvests from ruin. 

" The grandeurs of the ride towards Gorham across the prominent 
streams, kept close on the limits of ravage. The ' wild Ammonoosuc ' 
ran fierce and 4 arrowy,' purple in his rage, just ready to burst his 
bounds and desolate the fields. At the same time, the Pemigewasset 
was sweeioing wood, by the thousand cords, over the tops of the corn, 
in the Plymouth valley. Large streams from districts of red-colored 
earth added to the wildness of the ride by their full gutters of blood. 
We saw the depredators at work that bother the stage-drivers so, and 
increase the county taxes. Rills were invading the roads, running 
down and across them, gullying them, tearing the 5 earth out, now and 
then, and leaving holes large enough to upset a carriage, and almost 
to hide a horse. The large Ammonoosuc swept in right royal style 
through Bethlehem, dashing a mad mass of amber and foam under 
the arching bridge, which the waves leaped up to seize. That was 
the contribution of Mount Washington to a flood somewhere along on 
the Connecticut, — his assessment on a railroad company for a bridge 
swept off, in consideration of his general service as a father of foun- 
tains and a purifier of the winds. Israel's River, in Jefferson, had 
turned acres of meadow into ponds. The Saco had dashed away 
several small bridges, and interrupted for some days the travel be- 
tween the Notch and the Glen. The Peabody roared over the whole 
of its broad bed. The Moose River, that flows into the Androscog- 
gin near the Alpine House, raced along so fiercely that a bridge was 
saved only by chaining it to some trees. 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



387 



" This has been the golden week of the summer. The heavy- 
rains, of which I recently wrote you, purged the air to crystal clear- 
ness. The temperature has been cool enough to make mid-clay riding 
comfortable. It is difficult to believe that we are living in August ; 
by the scenery-calendar our days are transposed from the heart of 
September. Majestic clouds — massive fragments of the storm — have 
been rolling out of the west, throwing the living blue of the sky into 
relief with their dazzling domes, and interweaving with the cool, rich 
light, shadows soft as plush, as a royal vesture for the hills. 

" But when their week of duty to the material world and the bodily 
necessities was over, they were flooded with a beauty that seemed 
eager to make up, by its quality, for the gray mufflers of mist that 
had hidden them so long from the sunshine and our eyes. And so, 
this week, they have been fountains of a water that refreshes the 
thirst of the spirit. I have visited anew all the familiar, favorite 
spots around Gorham, during the last few days, and have found then 
more fascinating in their new investitures than the first sight of en- 
tirely new landscapes would have been. All the hills stood out in 
court-costume. 

" And now let us take a ride towards the village of Jefferson. 
Can anything be more fascinating than those ripples of shadow that 
flow down the twin peaks of Madison and Adams, chased by flushes 
of sunshine, which again are followed by thin waves of gloom ? Let 
the horse walk as slowly as he will, while we feast on this thrilling 
unsteadiness of vesture that wanders and widens from pinnacle to 
base. Ride on, till summit after summit of the White Mountain 
chain comes out, and then return, facing their broad fortresses of 
forest crowned with naked rock. Notice how the shadows spot them 
alternately, so that Washington and Adams are kindled into light, 
while Madison and Jefferson are black-muzzled with darkness. Look 
at the flashes of sunlight on the hills, that turn acres of the clean- 
washed wilderness into patches of shining satin. W^atch that deep 
shadow drop from a burly cloud to spread a velvet cloak on the moun- 
tain. Look off now, as the village of Jefferson lies at your feet, and 



388 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



see the Green Mountains, the Pliny Hills, the Franconia range stand 
up as exhibition figures to show off the deep furs, the silky lights, the 
velvets, brown, blue, and blue-black, that are woven out of the sky 
looms to-day, to invest them. 

" But the most surprising beauty awaits us as we ride opposite the 
great ravine of Mount Adams, and look far up to the cascades, with 
which the rains have enlivened its cliffs and slides. Now for a dis- 
play of mountain jewelry, such as is rarely seen. A long, narrow, 
leaping stream gleams aloft, — a chain of diamonds dropped from the 
neck down the bosom of the mountain. The sun looks full upon it, 
while the wings of the ravine are in deep shadow, and you see a 
broad wrapper adorned from the collar downwards with flashing gems. 
They blaze like lumps of sunshine, — like the diamonds on the crown 
of the skeleton in the pass, upon which young Arthur trod, 

and the skull 
Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown 
Rolled into light, and turning on its rims, 
Fled like a glittering rivulet to the tarn. 

The shadow falls upon the cataract, and it is quenched, — put out 
more quickly than its own water would extinguish a small fire. It 
does not seem possible that a shadow can so utterly cancel all traces 
of the lovely sheen which lay in the gorge a moment before. But, 
if we watch the passing away of the shade, we shall see the sunlight 
strike the top of it again, and run down, waking diamond after dia- 
mond into glow, till the string is all alive again. Near this thread 
of brilliants is a huge rock over which a stream of water is falling, 
and that blazes like a mighty Koh-i-noor. The shadow ripples over 
that, too, and quenches it. It flows off, and instantly the rock burns 
again in the meridian light. Oh, the splendor of this picture ! We 
stop the wagon to watch the curious wrestle of the waters, — vapor 
destroying the dazzling glory that leaps from water ; we can hardly 
tear ourselves from the charming show of the sun's repeated gift of 
jewels, and the clouds' continually renewing envy. 
" The oldest settlers in these valleys said that carbuncles gleamed 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



389 



on the cliffs and in the gorges of the crystal hills. Many are the 
stories about the pioneers that were dazzled by their splendor, when 
lost among the passes, and of the parties that afterwards searched, 
and searched in vain, for the glittering stones. May it be that some 
stupid and frightened wanderer once saw, far above him in some of 
these chasms, some such spectacle of naming cliff, on whose wet face 
the sun was shining ? and that his report drew bands to explore the 
chambers of the hills for gems ? Well, what real gem could have 
been more beautiful than that flash upon the worthless granite of the 
ravine and precipice ? Did not the beauty we looked up to cost 
enough to be reckoned at the worth of diamonds. It required the 
whole sun, and the ocean, mother of the rain, and the volcanic force 
that drove the cliffs into the sky, and the laws that float and drive 
the clouds, to make it. It cost nature more than any real gem that 
belongs to a monarch's treasury. Why then should it be thought a 
stretch of fancy to speak of it as such ? It is beauty which God 
counts precious in the robing of the globe, and what matters it 
whether he evoke it from the slow crystal chemistries of the mine, or 
bid it glow at once on the mountain forehead, as the sun smites its 
face, fresh baptized with rain ? The ' great carbuncles ' of the 
mountains are its splendors that feed and quicken the sentiment of 
beauty." 

Jefferson Hill (Goodell's) may without exaggeration be called the 
ultima thule of grandeur in an artist's pilgrimage among the New 
Hampshire mountains, for at no other point can he see the White 
Hills themselves in such array and force. This view has other quali- 
fications to justify such a claim. The distance is happily fitted, not 
only to display the confederated strength of the chain, but also to 
reveal in the essential marks of form and texture the noblest charac- 
ter of the separate mountains. As we have said also, the smaller 
Franconia group rises farther away in front, separated from them 
by the dark bulk of Cherry Mountain in mid-ground ; and on the 
right hand the savanna that stretches along the Connecticut pre- 

52 



390 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



sents a landscape contrast of a magnitude and distinctness rarely 
met with. 

It will not be amiss, if at this point, we summon before the mind's 
eye for comparison the six most attractive landscape views which the 
region has displayed to us, namely, — the views from Artist's Hill in 
North Conway ; from the school-house in West Campton ; from the 
Glen ; from Shelburne about two miles below the Lead-Mine Bridge, 
on the east bank of the Androscoggin ; from Milan ; and from Jeffer- 
son Hill. In the ordinary daylight of midsummer — that is, white 
light, just enough tinged with color to give it warmth — these views 
will supply different general impressions, both of the body of the scenes 
and their color. Between Conway and Campton there will be the 
least, and between the former and the Glen the most difference. 

As a composition, the view from Artist's Hill is very symmetri- 
cally proportioned, and is superior to any other in the variety and 
graduations of its forms. Mount Washington, which is always the 
leading object of interest, occupies the central position. The inferior 
hills rise from the level meadows on either hand, step by step towards 
his summit, which dominates over the whole scene. In this noble 
symmetry of multitudinous details it differs from most of the other 
general views of the White Hills. The Shelburne view is superior in 
simplicity, largeness of features, and bold picturesqueness. In grace- 
ful picturesqueness it must yield to Conway ; but the mountain forms 
in Madison and the crest of Jefferson are more spirited and decisive. 
To be enjoyed by the eye, without reference to the artist's purposes, 
we think that the greater vigor of the mountain lines, and the mar- 
vellous beauty of the Androscoggin, flowing through the meadows 
from the very base of Madison, make it superior to the view from 
Artist's Hill. But it certainly lacks something of symmetry and 
agreeableness of proportions, as well as extent and harmony of grada- 
tion, to balance its greater energy and demonstrative splendor. The 
effect is injured, perhaps, by having an inferior figure, Mount Madi- 
son, in such a position of perspective as to overtop Mount Washing- 
ton in magnitude and prominence. We have little doubt, however, 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



391 



that the majority of travellers, if they could be carried swiftly from 
point to point, would give the preference, on the whole, to the Shel- - 
burne landscape over the others. The Milan view is superior in 
symmetry to Shelburne, but is not equal to Conway in variety and 
proportion. The arrangement gives three distinct distances almost 
ungraduated. First, the river and its meadow borders suddenly cut 
* off by the dark joining of the long flattened spur of the Pilot Hills, 
and the abrupt and higher base of Mount Hays ; beyond these 
nothing but a wide space of gray air ; while far away in this arise 
the great mountains grouped in a triple-peaked pyramid, admirable 
in proportions, and strangely beautiful in the afternoon light, as if 
their surface were a conglomerate of the earth's rarest gems. 

From the School-House Hill in Campton, the Franconia Mountain 
view shows in the composition, and especially in the nearer features, 
nearly as much variety and beauty as that from the hill in North 
Conway ; but the gradations lack boldness, and two leading points of 
interest in the distance — the Notch and the summit of Lafayette — 
somewhat weaken the unity and effective simplicity of the whole. In 
both the Glen and the Jefferson Hill views there is not much variety 
of features or forms ; but the grandeur of the few they have ren- 
ders the deficiency of slight account, while the arrangement of them 
serves to emphasize individual parts, without much detriment to the 
symmetry or force of their associated effect. 

But in these, as in nearly all other natural scenes, it is not so much 
the forms, and their dimensions, proportions, and arrangements which 
produce the effect of beauty and sublimity, as the quality, variety, 
and harmony of the colors which overlay and imbue them. Indeed 
without color there is not anything in nature capable of artistic or 
poetic expression. If it were possible to mould in plaster of Paris an 
exact duplicate of Mont Blanc, and the range of which it is the head, 
and to set the model in place of the removed Alps, surrounding the 
whole with untinted air, the necessity of color to expression would 
need no further argument. 



392 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



When judged in respect of color, we must make a different distri- 
bution of the prominent White Mountain views in rank and interest. 
Some points that affect the senses at first with most surprise, and 
produce the most powerful effect, will have the least attractions in 
a continued visit. The Notch, for instance, even if one could live 
there without fear, would be found very tame as a place of residence, 
on account of the grim monotony of the color upon its dismantled 
walls. And of the six views, to which notice has just been called, the 
Glen, where we come the nearest to the mountain monarchs, is the 
least rich in color. It shows little more than a single scale of hues, 
greatly prolonged and subtly graduated. The Shelburne view pre- 
sents in its color-scheme a combination of two simple scales, which 
together embrace the whole scene. The Milan view shows a harmony 
resulting from the contrast of three different and distinct scales, which 
produce a general impression of variety with very little intricacy, so 
that the view has richness with simplicity. From Jefferson Hill also 
we have only two or three simple scales of hues intimately blended. 

We remember hearing an artist use musical analogies to hint the 
character and contrasts of color-effects in these views. The Glen 
theme shows the striking of complex low-toned chords in vivid 
succession, as in the fortissimo passages of grand marches. The 
color-music of the Shelburne landscape gives a few similar but im- 
pressive phrases run into one prolonged forte passage, enlivened by a 
few points of peculiar emphasis. The hues on a scene like that which 
Milan gives, suggests a pastoral strain in three or four parts, of the 
character of Mendelssohn's " Midsummer Night's Dream." But in 
views like that from Campton, or the Artist's Hill in North Conway, 
color is displayed, not in simplicity or sombre breadth, but in variety 
and splendor, and in the intermingling of several contiguous and con- 
trasting scales. He spoke, too, if we remember rightly, of the differ- 
ence in the subtlety, delicacy, and richness of the dominant hues in 
each of these scenes, as an indication or type of the difference in the 
splendor of their general effects. The gray olive hue at the Glen 
expresses a sober richness, with comparatively little subtlety and deli- 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



393 



cacy, making the general effect a simple and sombre grandeur. The 
light and rich purple-olive at Jefferson Hill, with the greater delicacy - 
and variety displayed there, adds beauty to majesty. The blue- 
brown of Shelburne, the yellow-purple of Milan, and the violet-citrine 
of Campton, each showing an ascent of tone or hue, lead up to the 
orange-russet or purple, the most delicate, rich, and subtle of all, 
that dominates and typifies the unsurpassed magnificence of the 
color-harmonies of Conway. 

There are very few, however, who can appreciate, or even per- 
ceive — certainly they cannot without staying several days at a time 
amid the various scenes just spoken of — the differences in complexity 
of color and richness of bloom thus indicated. But grandeur of form 
can be seen and felt by everybody. And the White Mountain range 
is so much grander when seen from Jefferson than from any other 
point where the whole of it is displayed, and yet is set at such a dis- 
tance as to show the richest hues with which, as one feature of the 
landscape, it can be clothed, that we must award to this village the 
supremacy in the one element of mountain majesty. 

And here we must turn from the hills. We have not consciously 
neglected or slighted any landscape in the compass of the White 
Mountain tour. And yet our acquaintance with the mountains can- 
not, at the close, be measured by our minute familiarity with their 
heights, contours, and hues. Unless we find them something more 
than ministers to outward health, unless we find them quarries of a 
truth more substantial than geology, and treasuries of water more 
vital than their cascades pour, we see them only externally, and treat 
them too much as toys. The senses simply stare at nature. The 
intellect, by means of the senses, discerns regularity and law ; artis- 
tic taste enjoys the bloom and beauty which possibly slip unnoticed 
from the eye of science ; but it is the faculty of spiritual insight 
which penetrates to the inmost meaning, the message involved in the 
facts and processes of the material creation. 



394 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



The world was not whittled into shape, or built as an external 
thing by any methods of carpentry. God could not create anything 
other than vitally, so that it should be magnetized with His attri- 
butes, and exhale them to our faculties in proportion as they are fine 
enough to catch the effluence. Nature is hieroglyphic. Each promi- 
nent fact in it is like a type : ' its final use is to set up one letter of 
the infinite alphabet, and help us, by its connections, to read some 
statement or statute applicable to the conscious world. Mrs. Brown- 
ing tells us that, 

not a natural flower can grow on earth, 
Without a flower upon the spiritual side, 
Substantial, archetypal, all aglow 
With blossoming causes. 

And the ultimate service of a flower, a grain-field, a forest, or a 
mountain, is to authenticate some law of the social and moral world, 
by showing that the whole creation, material and rational, is built on 
one plan ; and that all reverence, all virtue, all charity, is conformity 
with the truth of things, — the acceptance by men of the principle 
that sustains the order and determines the beauty of the physical 
world. 

The universe was created so as to serve the prophet's purposes. 
All the dark facts in it dissolve into ink to write the folly and doom 
of evil ; all the winning and cheering facts in it melt into light to 
commend and eulogize what is good. Whatever we see " respires 
with inward meaning." When we have demonstrated the law of 
gravitation, and have seen how its force, — hidden in the sun, — 
grasps thence the farthest planet, and balances a family of worlds, 
have we not also shown how the justice of the Infinite Mind grapples 
every spirit of the globe, however far they wander from him, and 
holds nations as well as men by the invisible tendrils of his law ? 
And when we untwist the rays that leap unstinted and unceasing 
from the vesture of the sun, and find in each wave of them light and 
heat, and all colors, and vitality, and find them flooding the air of 
every planet as easily as they visit each, and present to every eye, 



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395 



kindling all nature for it, with no more labor than in doing it for one ; 
inflicting pain upon the diseased retina by the same beneficence that 
blesses the well one, and illumining a different world for each mind it 
visits, according to its culture or its purity, — have we not found a finer 
and vaster astronomy by our analysis and research ? — found a pic- 
tured statement of the interblending of Infinite grace and truth in 
the rays that stream continually in upon the soul's world, and of the 
way they bless us and color us according to our faculty of reception, 
and how they visit and rule every heart and will as easily as they 
fall upon one ? 

To win the secret of a weed's plain heart, 
Reveals the clue to spiritual things. 

And all science at last " blossoms into morals." Can we suppose 
that a risen saint, or an angel, in looking upon the universe, sees only 
a countless number of enclosures to feed mortal creatures until they 
die ? Is not every fact alive to such a spectator ? Is it not a reve- 
lation of the truth and perfectness of God which he beholds glowing 
in the electric pulses, the force of gravity, the waves of light, the 
tides of fife ? — -just as the deepest seer turned the scattered seed of 
spring and their various fortunes into a chapter of the world's gospel, 
translated the truth of a minute providence from the lily's leaf, and 
interpreted impartial goodness as the esoteric meaning of the broad 
bursts of sunshine and the uninquiring bounty of the rain ? Plainly 
to such an eye, this globe, with all its ranks and wrappings of life, 
from the central fire up through its rocky bandages to its vesture of 
air and fight, must be not so much a physical ball in space, as a 
translucent gospel, in which the laws of duty, purity, charity, and 
worship are stated in symbol. 

We become truly acquainted with a mountain, therefore, when it 
stands to us as an exponent and buttress of principles of the spiritual 
order, — when in a mood of cheerful reverence Ave catch the truth for 
the soul which lies behind, and plays through its truth for the mind 
and its apparel of beauty. We must be able to respond to the mean- 
ing of Wordsworth's passage, — 



396 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



The immeasurable height 
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, 
The stationary blasts of waterfalls, 
And in the narrow rent at every turn, 
Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn, 
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky, 
The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, 
Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside 
As if a voice were in them, the sick sight 
And giddy prospect of the raving stream, 
The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens, 
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light — 
Were all like workings of one mind, the features 
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree ; 
Characters of the great Apocalypse, 
The types and symbols of Eternity, 
Of first, and last, and midst, and without end. 

Fancy plays with outside resemblances ; but insight perceives the 
central analogies, following the lines of correspondence that tether 
facts in the physical region to truths in the moral plane above. One 
who has followed a mountain rivulet to its source, and who has 
also studied from a distance the shadowy furrow it has ploughed, 
as the witness of its persistent toil through centuries, cannot help 
feeling, after reading this passage of Mr. Ruskin, that its history is a 
lesson engraved, like the earliest commandments, on tables of stone. 
" A stream receives a slight impulse this way or that, at the top of 
the hill, but increases in energy and sweep as it descends, gathering 
into itself others from its sides, and uniting their power with its own. 
A single knot of quartz occurring in a flake of slate at the crest of 
the ridge may alter the entire destinies of the mountain form. It 
may turn the little rivulet of water to the right or left, and that little 
turn will be to the future direction of the gathering stream what the 
touch of a finger on the barrel of a rifle would be to the direction of 
the bullet. Each succeeding year increases the importance of every 
determined form, and arranges in masses yet more and more harmo- 
nious, the promontories shaped by the sweeping of the eternal water- 
falls. 

" The importance of the results thus obtained, by the slightest 



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397 



change of direction in the infant streamlets, furnishes an interesting 
type of the formation of human characters by habit. Every one of 
those notable ravines and crags is the expression, not of any sudden 
violence done to the mountain, but of its little habits, persisted in 
continually. It was created with one ruling instinct ; but its destiny 
depended, nevertheless, for effective result, on the direction of the 
small and all but invisible tricklings of water, in which the first shower 
of rain found its way down its sides. The feeblest, most insensible 
oozings of the drops of dew among its dust were, in reality, arbiters of 
its eternal form ; commissioned with a touch more tender than that 
of a child's finger, — as silent and slight as the fall of a half-checked 
tear on a maiden's cheek, — to fix forever the forms of peak and 
precipice, and hew those leagues of lifted granite into the shapes that 
were to divide the earth and its kingdoms. Once the little stone 
evaded, — once the dim furrow traced, — and the peak was forever in- 
vested with its majesty, the ravine forever doomed to its degradation. 
Thenceforward, day by day, the subtle habit gained in power ; the 
evaded stone was left with wider basement ; the chosen furrow deep- 
ened with swifter-sliding wave ; repentance and arrest were alike 
impossible, and hour after hour saw written, in larger and rockier 
characters upon the sky, the history of the choice that had been 
directed by a drop of rain, and of the balance that had been turned 
by a grain of sand." 

Or turn to this passage from Wordsworth, and see how imaginative 
perception reverses the commonplace of fancy. 

Kightly is it said 
That Man descends into the Vale of years; 
Yet have I thought that we might also speak, 
And not presumptuously, I trust, of Age, 
As of a final Eminence; though bare 
In aspect and forbidding, yet a point 
On which 'tis not impossible to sit 
In awful sovereignty; a place of power, 
A throne, that may be likened unto his, 
Who, in some placid day of summer, looks 
Down from a mountain-top, — say one of those 
High peaks that bound the vale where now we are. 
53 



398 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



Faint, and diminished to the gazing eye, 
Forest and field, and hill and dale appear, 
With all the shapes upon their surface spread. 
But, while the gross and visible frame of things 
Relinquishes its hold upon the sense, 
Yea almost on the Mind herself, and seems 
All unsubstantiated, — how loud the voice 
Of waters, with invigorated peal ' 
From the full river in the vale below, 

Ascending! 

And may it not be hoped, that, placed by age 
In like removal, tranquil though severe, 
We are not so removed for utter loss; 
But for some favor, suited to our need? 
What more than that the severing should confer 
Fresh power to commune with the invisible world, 
And hear the mighty stream of tendency 
Uttering, for elevation of our thought, 
A clear sonorous voice, inaudible 
To the vast multitude; whose doom it is 
To run the giddy round of vain delight 
Or fret and labor on the Plain below. 

But it is when we turn from the aspects to the science of the 
mountains that the noblest symbolism appears. In them, as through- 
out the creation, we read the lesson of unity through fraternity. Per- 
fect order is wrought out of interwoven service. Nothing lives iso- 
lated. All things exist by the charity of God, and the material 
world seems to respond to this fact by the mutual help ordained 
among its members. Every organization, while it is taking in what 
is necessary for its own subsistence and increase, must be exhaling 
or storing up some elements that are essential to other organizations, 
— perhaps belonging to other spheres of life. The sea gives to the 
meadow and is repaid from the hills. The forests breathe out vital- 
ity, and incorporate the poison, beneficent for them, which men and 
animals exhale. The equator " sends greeting" to the Arctic zone 
by the warm gulf-stream that flows near the polar coasts to soften 
their winds ; and the poles return a colder tide, and add an embassy 
of icebergs too, to temper the fierce tropic heats. The earth holds 
the moon in her orbit, and the moon makes the sea on our planet 
throb with life. 



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399 



One of the sweetest of the Psalms is an ode on the beauty of 
dwelling together in unity. And one of the illustrations in it, read 
in the version of Herder, makes the mountains a more charming sym- 
bol of it than our version suggests. 

Behold how lovely and how pleasant, 
When brothers dwell in peace together! 
Thus breathed its fragrance round 
The precious ointment on the head 
That ran adown the beard of Aaron. 
And reached the border of his garment. 
So descends the dew of Hermon, 
Eefreshing Zion's mountains, 
For there Jehovah gave command, 
That blessings dwell forevermore. 

According to this rendering, it is the vapors first settling upon the 
snowy and distant Hermon, from which rains are borne to the lower 
and parched hills of Zion, that bear testimony to the moral beauty of 
kindliness and interblended service among men. The law of frater- 
nity is the moral aspect of nature, — ethics and political economy hid- 
den in the constant order. Can we rightfully speak of society yet as 
superior to nature, when it is a fact that there would be no destitu- 
tion to breed despair, no cold nooks where human hearts sicken and 
shrivel, away from all sympathy, no starvation in Christian lands, if 
the laws of society were up to the level of the laws that rule any 
square mile of rural landscape ? 

.And let us see how aspiration is commended by the emphasis of 
nature. All bounty comes from the sky through heat and light, 
through wind and rain, and the life of the globe pays back something 
to the sky. How often we are permitted to see the mountains after 
a shower, when their wooded hollows are mighty censers pouring up- 
wards vapory incense, — tithes of the rain that had drenched their 
leaves and soaked their mosses ! It goes up fragrant with the in- 
most quality of the shrubs and vines, the pine forests, and the soil 
which the moisture had refreshed. Is not this true worship, the 



400 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



return to heaven of the same grace that was given thence, with the 
central character of the individual expressed in it ? — -just as the 
mountains send back in aromatic thanks the soul of the rain, which 
came to it tasteless and scentless from the sky. 

And thus every stream and river, as it flows to the ocean, yields an 
upward tribute, at the touch of the sun. The sea offers a great ob- 
lation. The very rocks reflect some of the heat that falls upon them, 
and aspire, through the lichens and mosses which they nourish, to 
direct communion with the air. An irreverent mind stands out of 
chord with nature on any level of the 

great world's altar stairs, 
That slope through darkness up to God. 

And how can one that lives among the mountains, with an insight 
that penetrates their purposes and service, help receiving a lesson of 
fortitude into his heart ? How can they but strengthen the heroic 
sentiments, so plainly do they tell of unselfish toil and suffering ? A 
great deal has been written about the difference, in the effect on the 
poetic sensibilities, between living near the mountains and by the sea. 
And no more brilliant contrast of this kind has been drawn than by 
the Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table in the following passage : — 

" I have lived by the sea-shore, and by the mountains. — No, I am 
not going to say which is best. The one where your place is is the 
best for you. But this difference there is : you can domesticate 
mountains, but the sea is ferae naturce. You may have a hut, or 
know the owner of one, on the mountain-side ; you see a light half- 
way up its ascent in the evening, and you know there is a home, and 
you might share it. You have noted certain trees, perhaps ; you 
know the particular zone where the hemlocks look so black in Octo- 
ber, when the maples and beeches have faded. All its reliefs and 
intaglios have electrotyped themselves in the medallions that hang 
round the walls of your memory's chamber. The sea remembers 
nothing ; it is feline. It licks your feet, — its huge flanks purr very 
pleasantly for you ; but it will crack your bones and eat you, for all 



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401 



that, and wipe the crimson foam from its jaws as if nothing had hap- 
pened. The mountains give their lost children berries and water ; 
the sea mocks their thirst and lets them die. The mountains have a 
grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity ; the sea has a fascinating, treach- 
erous intelligence. The mountains lie about like huge ruminants, 
their broad backs awful to look upon, but safe to handle ; the sea 
smooths its silver scales until you cannot see their joints, — but their 
shining is that of a snake's belly, after all. In deeper suggestiveness 
I find as great a difference. The mountains dwarf mankind, and 
foreshorten the procession of its long generations. The sea drowns 
out humanity and time ; it has no sympathy with either, for it be- 
longs to eternity, and of that it sings its monotonous song forever 
and ever." 

The hills and the sea are not only materially incommensurable as 
to sublimity, but they represent different sentiments, and appeal to 
different sympathies. A sick heart, or a weak nature, that needs 
morally more iron in its blood, must find the mountains the more 
medicinal companions. They are so patient ! They speak to us 
from the repose of self-centred character, the ocean from the heav- 
ings of unappeasable passion. All the hard conditions of our human 
lot are typified by the great hills. What a tremendous experience 
they undergo ! Yet they do not babble, or sob, or moan, or roar 
like the discontented, melancholy sea. The powers of the air bring 
all their batteries against them, lightnings blast and rive them, tor- 
rents plough them to the bone, sunshine scorches them, frosts gnaw 
away their substance and tumble it down to the valleys, — and they 
utter no cry. After thunder and hail and whirlwind, their peaks 
look out from above the baffled clouds, and take the sunshine with 
no bravado, as though it is their mission " to suffer and be strong." 
Dumb patience in trouble, persistent fortitude against obstacles, the 
triumphant power of a character rooted in truth over the hardships 
of life and the wrath of the world, — such a lesson and the tone of 
spirit that can exhibit it, they try to infuse into the soul that lives in 
their society. By this effluence, even though the recipient is un- 



402 



THE WHITE HILLS. 



conscious of the cause, they stimulate and soothe a flagging will 
or fainting heart, as the airs they purify search and reanimate an 
unstrung frame. 

Swedenborg tells us that, in the verbal Scripture, mountains corre- 
spond to the truths of the highest plane. Certainly in the physical 
economy they are the eloquent types of charity. How impressive 
and cordial is the open fact that nothing in nature lives for itself, — 
finds its end in itself ! Nothing at least that is normal and healthful 
does. A slimy pond and a fen are typical of selfishness, not the river 
and the glebe. The sun is a mighty institution, of which heat, light, 
and gravitation are the ever-streaming discount. The sea gives the 
rain, as the interest of its vast fund, for the world's good. The 
beauty which gratifies and soothes humanity is the perpetual dividend 
of the joint-stock of the universe. And charity, which is the general 
lesson of nature, is preached by the sovereign hills with the emphasis 
of heroic and vicarious suffering. 

Near one of the most inspiring views of the White Mountain range 
we have often seen a cottage, in which a family live with scarcely any 
furniture, and barely supplied even with summer necessities. The 
walls were not tight enough to keep out the rain and the winter 
snows. The inmates, when we first visited them, were too poor to 
own a cow. The father had been continually unfortunate, though 
industrious and strictly temperate. The mother was in feeble health, 
and was plainly suffering from too low and spare a diet. The tones 
of her voice w~ere saturated with misfortune. In winter, the man was 
afflicted with rheumatism so that he could not steadily earn his fifty 
cents a day by lumbering, when the snows were propitious ; in the 
summer, he tried to wring enough to keep off starvation out of 
some cold, thin land. Although this is, no doubt, an exceptional case 
in that district, should it be a possible case in any district of this 
continent ? Can we believe that there was an honest dollar of all the 
money hoarded in that county, so long as there was a man in it wil- 
ling to work and unable to get a substantial living for his family by 



THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. 



403 



his work, — living on the borders of stately forests, and suffering from 
cold in winter, — poorly clothed, while every bear on the neighboring 
heights was wrapped warm by the laws of nature, — impoverished 
in blood, when every weed that could fasten itself into a cranny 
of the rocks, where an inch of soil had lodged, had its portion of 
food supplied forthwith by an assessment on ocean, sun, and air ? 

Is it the written precept of the written Testament alone that in- 
trudes this question ? Mount Washington soared over that hut, and 
what did he say ? What does he do with the wealth lavished upon 
him ? He is an almoner of divine gifts. He condenses moisture 
interfused in winds that blow from polar seas, and stores it up for 
fountains, or pours it in rills. He invigorates the breezes that sweep 
pestilence from our cities. He breasts the winter tempests, and 
holds the snows with which they would smother him, and gives them 
slowly in the spring, letting the torrents tear his own substance also, 
to enrich the intervales of the Saco and Connecticut, and to keep the 
mills busy that help to clothe the world. A Greek sculptor had a 
wild dream of carving Mount Athos into a statue of Alexander, — its 
left arm to enclose a city of ten thousand, its right hand grasping an 
urn from which a river should pour perpetually into the sea. It is a 
bounty no less imperial that every great mountain represents. Nay, 
giving its own substance, too, in its disbursement of what is poured 
upon it, not withholding service though the condition be pain, it is 
tinged and glorified with light from the cross. In respect of the 
symbolic meaning of the hills, far more than in relation to the depths 
they open to scientific and artistic scrutiny, we may quote the weighty 
words : " The truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God : to him 
who does not search it out, darkness ; to him who does, infinity." 



V 



1 



